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The Angel Story in the Book of Jubilees James C. VanderKam University of Notre Dame
I. Introduction The angelic interpretation of Gen 6:1-4 and surrounding passages is relatively widespread in Jewish and Christian literature of the Greco-Roman period. It is especially frequently attested in the literature that can be associated in some way with Qumran, whether in compositions that were inherited by the community living there or in texts that may have been written by members of it. The first and most detailed exposition of the angelic interpretation is found in the Enochic Book of the Watchers (BW = 1 Enoch 1-36). It later reappears in works such as Jubilees, the Genesis Apocryphon, the Pesher on the Periods, etc. In the history of scholarship on 1 Enoch and Jubilees, little has been written about the specifics of the angel stories in them and how they are related to one another, if in fact they are related. The classical commentaries on the ancient pseudepigrapha tend not to be commentaries at all but series of notes and collections of parallels. The only detailed, systematic analysis of the BW and later embodiments of the angel story has been made by D. Dimant. As she has shown in great detail, even so early a work as the BW preserves more than one version of the story. In fact, she distinguishes three different ones in chapters 6-16. They are: (1) a story about angels who became impure with the daughters of men, became the fathers of giants (= µylipin), and sinned; it is a midrashic interpretation of Gen 6:1-4 lacking any connection with the flood. (2) a story about angels who taught magic and secrets to humanity and led them into sin (they also became the fathers of demons, who are µylp:n?); it is also apparently a midrashic interpretation of Gen 6:1-4 which is connected with the flood as a punishment on humanity's sin. (3) the story about Azael; it is a story about the works that Azael taught to humanity and thus led them into sin, and it interprets Gen 6:11-12. It supplies an explanation for the corruption before the flood and a reason for the punishment constituted by the flood. Dimant further believes that versions 1 and 2 were combined first, as both interpret the same biblical base, and that the Azael story was subsequently merged with the combination through influence of the shared feature of angelic teachings. After isolating and discussing these versions of the angel story, she pursued her investigation into later literature and found that the versions and motifs in the BW lived on in Jewish and Christian literature, although at times in rather different settings. One of the works that Dimant analyzed was the Book of Jubilees. She showed that Jubilees presents the first version of the angel story, that is, the one in which the angels become defiled with women and father giants. As she writes: "... in chaps. 5 and 7 the author of Jubilees used only the story about the angels who became impure as it is related in 1 Enoch 6-11, without including other elements that are found in the BW, such as the figures of Shemihazah and Azael. The way in which he presents the account gives evidence that the author of the book was aware of all details in the story about the angels who became impure." She maintains that Jubilees' surprising statement that the angels originally descended on a positive mission from God and were seduced only after they reached the earth is probably not a part of the way in which this story was first formulated. On her view, it could be opposing the picture in the BW in which the descent of the angels is part of their sin; it may also be the "first sign of a tendency that will grow stronger--to weaken the motif of the angels who sinned." As she understands the story in Jubilees, the flood was a punishment on the the giants but also on humanity and the animals. She finds that Jubilees is later than the BW but is not dependent on it: "... rather, it makes use of a related aggadic tradition. It is possible that the author of Jubilees knew in separate form the traditions that are joined in the aggadic source in 1 Enoch 6-11." The purpose of this paper is to subject Jubilees' presentation of the watcher story to a somewhat different examination. The chief goal of the study is to clarify the new elements in Jubilees' way of formulating the story in chap. 5 and the first part of chap. 6, although the information from elsewhere in the book (especially chap. 7) will be adduced where relevant. It may be that this study will permit some conclusions about the relationship between Jubilees' version and those in the BW. It will be shown that the author of Jubilees did in fact know the story from the BW but shaped the different elements in it to his own purposes. II. The Angel Story in the Book of Jubilees A. The Place of the Story in Jubilees Whatever relationship may obtain between the BW and Jubilees, there can be no doubt that they are very different types of works. The BW centers about sin and ultimate punishment. The editor devotes a large percentage of his text to these themes and their ramifications. As he sets forth the story about the angels, he at times bases himself solidly on the biblical text, but he does not place the angel story in the same context that Genesis does. We read nothing in 1 Enoch 1-5 of Genesis 1-4 or the genealogy in Genesis 5, nor is much space allotted to the flood narrative that follows Gen 6:1-4. One gets the impression from the BW and the other Enochic compositions that the Eden story in Genesis 3 played only a modest role in their authors' understanding of the origin and character of sin. The writers in this tradition clearly knew about the early chapters of Genesis; that is obvious from passages such as 1 Enoch 24-25; 32:6, and 1 Enoch 85 in the Animal Apocalypse, to name only three. The approach favored in the Enochic tradition as it has survived saw Gen 6:1-4 as providing an explanation for the supernatural growth of evil which became so monstrous that it justified the extreme measure of God's sending the flood--a deluge that was the first judgment and presaged the final one. A story about a piece of forbidden fruit and another about a fratricidal act may have seemed insufficient to explain how frightfully conditions had deteriorated on the earth. Only a supernatural boost for wickedness could account for what the pre-flood situation was and why God ultimately punished the practitioners of iniquity so comprehensively and definitively. Jubilees is, of course, much more systematically and tightly tied to the biblical text than is the BW. It begins its narrative with Genesis 1 and continues through the remainder of Genesis and the first half of Exodus. Hence it places its rendition of Gen 6:1-4 directly after the Genesis 5 genealogy and before the flood story. It resembles the BW to a certain extent in that it does not take up all parts of Gen 6:1-4 at once. In fact only 5:1 (parallel to Gen 6:1-2, 4) is drawn from the biblical paragraph, and it is not until several verses later that Gen 6:3 is handled. Moreover, Jubilees does not accord such a dominant role to the angel story as the BW and other Enochic compositions do. Not only does it assign a smaller percentage of its text to the story; it also does not present it as the pre-eminent cause of human evil. The writer treats the Eden narrative in some detail (the 31 verses of chap. 3); hence, the angel story has not displaced it. Moreover, the myth of the angels plays no part in Jubilees 1 where God predicts the historical course of Israel's apostasy, repentance, and renewal. To be sure, the chapter is concerned with the nation Israel and its fate, not with antediluvian conditions. But one would not be too surprised if the results of angelic sin were mentioned at some point, if only in passing, in a chapter of this kind. The same is the case for the apocalypse in Jubilees 23, which also fails to mention the sin of the angels. The story is a major theme for a few chapters in Jubilees (5:1-10; 7:20-25; see also 4:15, 22; 8:3), but after chap. 10:1-14 it is largely forgotten, reappearing only once in the Abraham section (20:5) and in the Exodus tale at the end of the book (chap. 48; 49:2). The angel story is not nearly so dominant a theme in Jubilees as it is 1 Enoch. The use of the story shows something about the procedure favored by the author. His habitually adheres closely to the text of Genesis-Exodus, and where he diverges from it he does not deviate in so massive a way as the authors of the individual sections in the BW do. Moreover, as will be shown shortly, the text of Genesis is the springboard for addition of any material from elsewhere in the Bible. B.. The First References to the Angel Story 1. Jub. 4:15: The author of Jubilees makes no allusion to the angel story until he is well into his reworking of the Genesis 5 genealogy. Of Jared, the sixth from Adam and the father of Enoch, he writes: "He [Malalael] named him Jared because during his lifetime the angels of the Lord who were called Watchers descended to earth to teach mankind and to do what is just and upright upon the earth." (4:15) As noted above, Dimant considers the theme of the positive errand on which the watchers came to be a secondary motif in the version of the angel story presented in Jubilees. Whatever its status may be in a hypothetical original form of the story, there is at least no external evidence for an addition or gloss here in the text of Jubilees. Moreover, the statement serves an important purpose: it protects the reputation of heaven by distancing evil from it. That is, evil does not come from heaven to earth, as it does in 1 Enoch, but it originates on the earth. The angels did not make their sinful, lustful resolve in heaven as they do in 1 Enoch 6, and, as Dimant has commented, their descent was thus not part of their sin. The explanation for the appearance of the watcher motif in the Jared paragraph is obvious to anyone who has read 1 Enoch 6:6: his Hebrew name suggests descent, and it is one in a series of etymological associations for the names in Genesis 5 that were developed in the Enochic tradition. It appears from the text that Jared's father must have been prescient because he named his son before the watchers actually descended. The positive purpose for which they descended (note that they descend, they do not fall) may be related to the notion, found in the BW (1 Enoch 8), that the angels taught. There, however, the motif is a negative one; here it is purely positive. Ironically, the angels descended to teach humanity the very virtues that they themselves soon lost when they came into contact with women. It may not be entirely accidental that Jared is surrounded by other names which echo themes from the angel story. Jared's mother is named Dinah, a term that suggests judgment, while later we learn that his son Enoch's wife Edni was the daughter of one Daniel. The fact that the angels came to earth to teach righteousness should also be suggestive of the name and title of another character in the drama: Enoch's name seems to have suggested education (note that he learned instruction and taught humanity according to Jub. 4:17), and he was identified as the scribe of righteousness (1 Enoch 12:4) and recorded the deeds that would be punished at the final judgment (Jub. 4:19, 23-24). 2. Jub. 4:22: Jubilees' second allusion to the angel episode before the story itself is, naturally, in the Enoch paragraph which immediately follows the one about Jared. The allusion comes after the verse that notes his marriage to Edni and the birth of Methuselah. In the section that corresponds with the first reference in Genesis to Enoch's walking with µyhlah, the text says: "He was, moreover, with God's angels for six jubilees of years. They showed him everything on earth and in the heavens--the dominion of the sun--and he wrote down everything. He testified to the Watchers who had sinned with the daughters of men because these had begun to mix with earthly women so that they became defiled. Enoch testified against all of them." (4:21-22) From these few words we can glean that the writer of Jubilees knew much of the Enochic literature, and here we see that the version of the watcher story used by our author included mixing angelic and human realms and the defilement that resulted. Enoch's testifying against or to the watchers is familiar from 1 Enoch 12-16. Jub. 4:21-22 is now known to have a Hebrew parallel in 4Q227 frag. 2. The scribe who made a supralinear addition in line 1 has even emended the text to fit the same framework as Jubilees by reading whwndml rather than whwdml. Line 2 mentions the six weeks of years also found in Jub. 4:21; the 294 years involved is now known to be the largest unit in the Qumran calendrical cycles. These the angels taught to Enoch. The final sentence of 4:22 appears as µlwk l[ d[yw in 4Q227 2 3. C. The Angel Story in Jubilees 5-7 By the time readers of Jubilees reach the section where the story of the watchers is told, they have a good idea about the main themes in it. The story itself begins in Jubilees 5, directly after the reference to the births of Noah's three sons, the final element in Genesis 5. In the paragraphs below, after a brief description of the relations between Jubilees' story and the text of Genesis, some of the key items in Jubilees' version will be treated in more detail. 1. Jubilees and Genesis: Apart from allusions in chaps. 4, 8, 10, and 20, the primary angel story is found in Jubilees 5-7; these chapters are closely related to Genesis 6-9. Jubilees shortens the flood story considerably, especially by omitting the latter part of Genesis 6 (vv. 13-21), almost all of Genesis 7 (it lacks equivalents of Gen 7:1-10, 13-15, 21-23) and large sections of Genesis 8 (missing are 8:1-3, 6-13, 15-17). Some missing parts appear elsewhere (e.g., in the calendrical section at the end of Jubilees 6), but Jubilees eliminates virtually all instructions to Noah about the ark and thus also does away with the duplication in Genesis at this point. If one looks at the sections of Jubilees which have no strict parallel in Genesis, they are: Jub. 5:6-7 (punishment of the angels and their children); 5:9-21 (their children are killed, the angels bound, a new nature is promised, and judgment and the day of atonement are treated; vv. 20-21 quickly summarize the orders to Noah about the ark); 5:29 (calendrical notes about events during the flood); 6:2 (Noah's atoning sacrifice); 6:1-15 (oath about not consuming blood); and 6:17-38 (a calendrical section). 2. Jub. 5:1 and Gen 6:1-2, 4: Jubilees, like 1 Enoch 6:1-2 (cf. 7:1-2), begins the story by citing from the Genesis paragraph. Genesis 6 Jubilees 5 hmdah ynp l[ brl µdah ljh yk yhyw wa-kona 'ama wat>anu daqiqa 'egwa\la µhl wdly twnbw 'emma-h>eya\w yebzexu diba gas>s>a kwella\ medr wa-'awa\led tawalledu lomu tbf yk µdah twnb ta µyhlah ynb waryw wa-re'yewwon mala\'ekta 'egzi'abh>e\r ba- wrjb rça lkm µyçn µhl wjqyw hnh 'ah>atti za-'iyobe\lewu zentu 'esma sanna\yt la-re'iy 'ema\ntu wa-nas]'ewwon loton lomu 'anesteya\ 'em-kwellon 'ella xarayu µçh ynça µlw[m rça µyrbgh hmh µhl wdlyw wa-walada\ lomu weluda wa-'emuntu ra"a\yt. At this point Jubilees stops quoting from Gen 6:1-2, 4 and moves into its own expansion of the tradition. The differences between Gen 6:1-2, 4 and Jub. 5:1 are relatively minor and usually obvious. Jubilees presupposes µdah ynb at the beginning of Gen 6:1, rather than the simple µdah in the biblical text. It also presupposes lk before hmdah. In Gen 6:2, where the MT has the phrase µyhlah ynb Jubilees renders with "the angels of God", in agreement with the Old Greek, the Old Latin, the Ethiopic Genesis, and Josephus, Antiquities 1.73. The note about the date in Jubilees fits a larger pattern in the book in which events are tied to a timeline that begins with creation. The jubilee period in question is the twenty-fifth one as 4:33 had indicated. Oddly, the writer may not have specified the year (see below). Jub. 5:22 indicates that the flood did not come until the twenty-seventh jubilee. The number of the jubilee for the descent of the angels may be significant: the twenty-fifth one would be the last jubilee in the first half of the history, since the book covers 50 jubilee periods (50:4). The meaning may be that the first half of the narrated history concluded with the ominous event of the angelic desire for women which led to an illicit mixing of beings from different orders and eventually to the evil that had to be punished in the flood. Perhaps this is one reason why the writer is so insistent that the Israelites not intermarry with the peoples of Canaan after they enter the land in the fiftieth jubilee. In the section that speaks of the angels' seeing the women, MT mentions the daughters of men but Jubilees employs a pronoun instead. Somewhat redundantly, Jubilees adds that the women were beautiful "to see". Note that the author does not resort to the doubling of adjectives describing the women as 1 Enoch 6:1 does, nor does he elaborate the matter in the style of Targum Pseudo-Jonathan which adds after "beautiful": "that they painted their eyes and put on rouge, and walked about with naked flesh". Jubilees has a suffixal expression with the verb "they took". But the major difference is in the final sentence in Jubilees: "They gave birth to children for them and they were giants." These words correspond with µyrbgh hmh µhl wdlyw (Gen 6:4). Thus µyrbgh are understood as giants in Jubilees, and at least in this passage there is no indication that the other two phrases at the end of Gen 6:4 were understood to be different classes of giants. 3. Jub 5:2-11: Jubilees departs from the Genesis framework after briefly reciting the basics of the story. Thus the writer bypasses Gen 6:3 at this point and postpones his treatment of it until 5:8. At 5:2 he adduces a number of verses from Genesis 6 that indicate the all-pervasive character of sin on the earth as a result of the watchers' transgression. The passages that underlie the wording in Jubilees are Gen 6:12b, 6:5b, 6:12, 6:7a, in that order. These statements lead to Jubilees' reproduction of Gen 6:8 (= Jub 5:5) in which the reader learns that God was pleased with Noah alone (alone [bah>titu = wdbl] is an addition found in no version of Genesis). Jub 5:2 claims about the beings living on the earth: "All of them corrupted their way [fenotomu = µkrd] and their prescribed course [s]erÆatomu; Goldmann µhytwqjw]. They began to devour one another and wickedness increased on the earth." Evil led to the divine verdict that all people and living beings would be obliterated from the earth which God had created (5:4). The prescribed course that the wicked corrupted was the law or statute appropriate for their place in creation, the constitution that God had prescribed for each class of beings. Jub 5:6-11, an extra-Genesis section, details the punishments meted out on the various sinners. In 5:6 the author still refers to the angels as "his [that is, God's] angels". They had incurred his wrath by mixing with women and following the prescribed course of humanity rather than their own; hence God removed them from their positions of authority. Since they had departed from the way set for them, they had to be removed from their appointed stations whose responsibilities they no longer carried out. The punishment for the immortal wartchers was to be bound alone in the depths of the earth--a motif familiar from 1 Enoch 10:12. The next sinners to be handled are "their children". In something of a flashback, the writer says that as their angelic fathers watched the children killed one another with the sword until there were no survivors. It was only after viewing this gruesome spectacle that the fathers were bound in the earth. The interesting item here is that this is the context in which the author of Jubilees chose to reproduce Gen 6:3: "He said: 'My spirit will not remain on people (sab') forever for they are flesh. Their lifespan is to be 120 years." In the context, with this verse surrounded by references to the children of the angels, the term translated people (sab') obviously refers to the giants who were identified as the children of the angels in 5:1--a point that Dimant has noted. The writer delayed reproducing Gen 6:3 until this stage in the text because he wanted to provide some context for the divine limit on lifespans. The text of Genesis hardly seemed to provide an adequate reason for the sentence. Anyone familiar with text-critical problems will immediately notice that Jubilees, like a number of other ancient witnesses (Peshitta, Old Greek, some Old Latin, Ethiopic Genesis, Targum Onkelos), reads "remain" (yenabber) rather than "judge" as in the MT. Whether this is actually a textual variant and whether all of these versions have the same one can be debated, but the Ethiopic texts suggest strongly that Jubilees's Hebrew original read rwdy as in 4Q252, not ^wdy or at the very least that the author understood ^wdy to mean rwdy. The general context indicates an interesting point. In the Qumran pesharim it is at times clear that where the biblical lemma contains a reading differing from the one in the MT the pesher indicates that the commentator knew both the variant and the reading familiar from the MT. Even if we consider rwdy to be a legitimate variant reading, it can hardly be doubted the the writer of Jubilees also knew about the reading ^wdy because in the immediate sequel he begins talking about the judgment at considerable length. Jub 5:6-11 concentrates on the judgment for the angels and giants, and the judgment theme returns in 5:13-16 where the fact that each is judged impartially according to a fixed set of standards appropriate to each kind is emphasized. All of this could have been suggested by the flood context, but it is likely that the variant ^wdy played a part in triggering the idea of judgment that receives extended attention in the context. Jub 5:8 = Gen 6:3 specifies that 120 years is a limit on life spans. Whatever group may be intended as the object of this limit in Genesis, it is unmistakable in Jubilees that the giants are the recipients of the decree, as we have seen. The setting in Jubilees makes it evident that the author has not read the purpose of the 120 years in the same way as the person who wrote 4Q252 did. In the latter, the 120 years are a period between Noah's 480th year and the flood which came in his 600th year. "[In the y]ear four hundred and eighty of Noah's life, Noah reached the end of them. And God 2 [sa]id: 'My spirit will not reside in man for ever'. Their days shall be fixed at one hundred and twenty 3 [y]ears until the end of the waters of the flood." In Jubilees the 120 years are a limit set on how long the giants will be allowed to live. The span of time involved would fit in well with the Jubilees chronology if, with Berger, we translate ba-'ah>atti za-'iyobe\leyu in Jub 5:1 (it dates the year when the marriages between angels and women took place) as meaning the first year (some manuscripts add the word for year) of the jubilee. If so, the lives of the giants could have extended to as many as 120 years but they would still have died comfortably before the flood. The first year in the jubilee in question is the year of the world 1177, and the flood came in the year 1308. Thus, even if they were born in the same year as the marriages, the giants would all have perished by 1297, some 11 years before the flood. This sentence entails that the giants, like their angelic fathers, cannot have been the ones who were punished by the flood according to this context in Jubilees. 4. Jub 5:12: One possibly puzzling verse in this section is Jub 5:12: "he made a new and righteous nature [fet>>>rata which Goldman renders literally as hayrb) for all his creatures so that they would not sin with their whole nature until eternity. Everyone will be righteous--each according to his kind--for all time." The passage is the immediate sequel to the section about how creatures corrupted their way so that they were obliterated from their positions. The new and righteous natures should in some way be related to these themes. The notion of a certain way or prescribed course is repeated frequently in the context and is obviously highly significant for the author. For example, Jub 5:2 accuses all animate beings of corrupting their way and prescribed course; 5:3 makes the same charge against the same creatures. According to 5:10, the condemnation of the great day of judgment will fall "on all who have corrupted their ways and their actions before the Lord." Jub 5:13 deals with "all who transgress from their way in which it was ordained for them to go". Divine judgment is passed on "each one in accord with his way" (5:15) because the deity showed no favor to "all who corrupted their ways and their plan(s) before the flood" (5:19). Later one learns that Noah was the lone exception to this blanket charge: "his mind was righteous in all his ways, as it had been commanded concerning him. He did not transgress from anything that had been ordained for him." (5:19) But in the immediate context, when Jub 5:12 speaks about a "new and righteous nature" and says that "[e]veryone will be righteous--each according to his kind", the intent should be that creatures (not just people) were again to be given the ability to operate within their created orders, in contrast to the systematic corruption of those orders by all living beings before the flood. Charles argued that the person who translated Hebrew Jubilees into Greek had failed to notice that in this passage (vv. 10b-12) the verbs were converted forms of the perfect, not simple perfects. Hence, in his view the entire passage should be rendered in the future tense: he will make a new and righteous nature, etc. The final judgment and new creation are, therefore, what the writer has in mind. However, K. Berger is correct in maintaining that the verse need not be taken eschatologically in the strict sense of the term. It refers to the renewal after the flood that is remarked in other sources as well. In this connection 1 Enoch 10-11 resembles Jubilees to some extent. It speaks about the punishment of the angels and the destruction of "all the souls of lust and the sons of the Watchers, for they have wronged men. Destroy all wrong from the face of the earth, and every evil work will cease. And let the plant of righteousness and truth appear, and the deed will become a blessing; righteousness and truth will they plant in joy for ever." (10:15-16) 4QEnc 1 v 5-6 shows that the sequel read: "And now all] the righteous shall escape and they shall be [alive until they beget] thousands; and all the days [of your youth and] of your old age shall be completed in peace." It is difficult to sort out which statements in the context refer to the eschaton and which to the immediate postdiluvian age, but at least the passage shows a great change after the flood. The targumic tradition espressed in Pseudo-Jonathan (and Neofiti) may be pointing in this direction with its lengthy rendering of Gen 6:3: "The Lord said in his Memra, 'None of the evil generations that are to arise (in the future) will be judged according to the order of judgment applied to the generation of the Flood, (that is) to be destroyed and wiped out from the world." One arrangement applied to that generation but a new one would be in effect after the flood. Gen 9:11-17, which mentions the covenant with Noah and the fact that a flood would never again be sent, may have played a part in the development of this theme. Although the post-diluvian renewal was to be no more successful than the first effort to give creatures a righteous nature, a least a new beginning was made. As God had resolved to obliterate every living thing on the earth that he had created because all had corrupted their way (Jub 5:4), so he determined to give them a new nature, a new creation after the flood. 5. Jub 5:17-18; 6:1-2: Jub 5:17-18 introduce the subject of the day of atonement without mentioning it by name. The narrator (the angel of the presence) turns from the story to address Moses about the people of Israel: "Regarding the Israelites it has been written and ordained: 'If they turn to him in the right way, he will forgive all their wickedness and will pardon all their sins'. It has been written and ordained that he will have mercy on all who turn from all their errors once each year." The wording indicates a citation, presumably from a heavenly tablet, but the earthly source for it is not obvious. Charles suggested that it was "[p]robably based on Jer. xxxvi.3", and he also mentioned Jer 18:8 and Jon 3:8 as possible sources. The Jeremiah passages speak of God's repenting from carrying out what he planned if Israel would turn from its wickedness; Jon 3:8 describes the Ninevites' penitence. None of these is overly close to the wording in Jubilees. While some of Jubilees' wording echoes Lev 16:16 and 21, Lev 16:34 may be the chief source for the quotation: "This shall be an everlasting statute for you, to make atonement for the people of Israel once in the year for all their sins [hnçb tja µtafj lkm]." Even though the day of atonement is not named in the text, the affinity of the wording with Lev 16:34 indicates that this is the subject. Hence the topic of the day of atonement surfaces in Jubilees long before the historical event that supposedly gave rise to it--the grieving of Jacob at the "death" of Joseph (34:18-19). Jub 5:17-18 is only the first reference to atonement in the book's presentation of the flood story. Jub 6:1-2, which should correspond with Gen 8:19-20 (Noah's post-diluvian sacrifice), reads: "On the first of the third month he left the ark and built an altar on this mountain. He appeared on the earth, and took a kid, and atoned with its blood for all the sins of the earth because everything that was on it had been obliterated except those who were in the ark with Noah." Actually Jub 6:3-4 reproduce the Genesis version of Noah's sacrifice. Jubilees' atoning offering is an addition to the text of Genesis. The clause "he appeared on the earth", while it is the better reading in the Ethiopic manuscript tradition, is probably not original. Earlier editors had already noted that two Ethiopic verbs which resemble each other in appearance, probably underlie the mistake: "He appeared" is 'astar'aya, while "he atoned" would be 'astasraya. Hence, the original reading was "he atoned for the earth". The likelihood that "he atoned" is the preferable reading increased considerably when the Genesis Apocryphon was deciphered. This work, which is closely related to Jubilees, reads as follows in a context that is broken but from which enough remains to see that it is the same as Jub 6:1-4//Gen 8:19-20: "Col. X 12 [...] the ark settled [on] one of the mountains of Hurarat [...] 13 [...] I atoned for all the whole earth [...] 15 [...] I burned incense on the altar [...]." The facts that Jubilees alludes to the day of atonement in 5:17-18, that the writer has Noah make an atoning sacrifice in 6:1-2, and that both passages are absent from the base in Genesis suggest that the topic was significant for the author. What could have been the textual or other types of stimuli which made him or his tradition read atonement into the narrative? It turns out to be an unusual theme in ancient treatments of the Genesis flood story. The discussion at this point in Genesis Rabbah says nothing about atonement; rather, the issue debated there is whether Noah's sacrifice was a burnt offering or a peace offering (Gen. Rab. 34.9). Other texts seem more concerned with noting that Noah rebuilt the altar on which Cain and Abel had presented their offerings (Pirke de R. El. 23; some targums). Both Jubilees and the Genesis Apocryphon say that Noah atoned for (all) the earth. Thus the earth had been defiled in such a way that atonement was required for it. It seems from the context in Jubilees that the author has in mind every wrong that had been committed on the earth and that rendered the earth polluted. In his note to Jub 6:2, Charles says about the phrase "made atonement for the earth": "Though Jewish Haggada knows nothing of this particular act of atonement, it is easy to justify such a conception from Lev. xviii.26-28; Num. xxxv.33, 34. The earth itself as being defiled needed expiation. Unnatural vices and murder pollute it." Berger adds: "Die Entsühnung des Landes war wohl wegen des vergossenen Blutes notwendig: V 9; VII 25; vgl. Num 35.33f; VII 33. Noah kann als einziger mit seinem Opfer universale Sühne schaffen.... Lev 18:26-28, the first biblical passage to which Charles alluded, is set in a context of laws prohibiting actions such as those committed by Egyptians and Canaanites. These practices defiled the land and caused the previous inhabitants to be vomited from it (vv. 24-25). That is, the people became defiled through such practices and thus defiled the land which had to be punished for its iniquity (v. 25). It is worth noting that illicit degrees of sexual relations are the subject of the paragraphs immediately before vv. 26-28, including the law prohibiting relations with a woman in her menstrual uncleanness (v. 19). This was one of the angels' offenses according to the Greek version of 1 Enoch 15:4 (ejn tw~/ ai{mati tw~n gunaikw~n ejmiavnqhte). The pertinent verses in Leviticus say:
Jubilees does draw attention to the illicit nature of the angelic marriages and thus of the sexual relations involved. While Jub 5:1 ("So they married of them whomever they chose") simply repeats Gen 6:2 verbatim, the topic returns in chap. 7. There Noah, as he is prescribing laws for his descendants, "testified to his sons that they should do what is right, cover the shame of their bodies, bless the one who had created them, honor father and mother, love one another, and keep themselves from fornication, uncleanness, and from all injustice. For it was on account of these three things that the flood was on the earth, since (it was) due to fornication that the Watchers had illicit intercourse--apart from the mandate of their authority--with women. When they married of them whomever they chose they committed the first (acts) of uncleanness." (7:20-21) Lev 18:26-28, which is directly preceded by laws about illicit sexual relations, could have reminded Jubilees' author about the connection between such offenses and defilement of the land on which they were committed. It is also worth noting that the subject of the fourth-year planting appears in the next chapter in Leviticus (19:23-25), just as it follows Noah's warnings to his children in Jub. 7:34-37. The second passage--Num 35:33-34, which both Charles and Berger noted--occurs in a chapter that speaks about cities for the Levites and cities of refuge along with the related topics of murder and blood revenge. The verses immediately before the relevant section deal with murder and the requirement that a murderer be put to death, with no ransom (rpk is used in vv. 31, 32) being acceptable.
Here we find atonement connected with pollution of the land by blood. The blood that was shed on the earth is, of course, a major point in Jubilees' version of the angel story, as it is in the BW. Animate beings ate one another (5:2); the giants engaged in mutual slaughter before their fathers' eyes (5:9); and 6:7-8 repeat the law in Genesis about consuming and shedding blood (cf. also vv. 10, 12, 13). But this point, too, is developed to a greater extent in chap. 7:
Noah subsequently expressed his fear that when he was gone his children would shed blood on the earth and thus also suffer obliteration (v. 27). He mandated great care in treating blood and noted the need to cover it. In 7:33 the writer shows that he does indeed have Num 35:33 in mind: "For the earth will not be purified of the blood which has been shed on it; but by the blood of the one who shed it the earth will be purified in all its generations." While these passages lie behind the introduction of atonement into Jubilees' story, an adjustment had to be made in the special case of Noah and the flood because the blood of the murderers was not available to atone for the defiled earth. Noah alone was in a position to offer such a sacrifice. The sins committed on the earth received atonement through the sacrifice of a goat. The goat should, although a different word is used in Jubilees than in the Ethiopic Leviticus, remind us of Leviticus 16 and its ceremonies for the day of atonement which involved two goats, one for the Lord and one for Azazel. Azazel is intriguing in this connection because of the similarity between his name and the name of a leading angel in the Watcher story--Asael. It is now clear from the Aramaic fragments of Enoch that the original form of the angel name in that book was las[ or laç[, neither of which closely resembles the lzaz[ of Lev 16:8, 10, etc. But at some point in the tradition the two were brought into closer connection so that by the time one reaches the Ethiopic version of 1 Enoch the two names are difficult to distinguish. 4Q180 1 7-8 and 4QEnGiantsa 7 i 6 (see also 11QTa 26:13 which reproduces Lev 16:21 but imports the name lazz[ into it) now show by the spellings they give to the name that the identification between the Azazel of Lev 16:8, 10, 26 and the Asael of the BW was current in the late second-temple period. in 4Q180 1 the name occurs twice and obviously within the context of a version of the angel story: line 7 reads r¿ça µykalmhw lazz[ l[ rçp, and line 8 has ¿lazz[ l[w µyrbg µhl wdl?yw. Then in 4QEnGiantsa 7 i 5-6, part of a section that mentions the sons of the watchers (line 5) and the watchers themselves (line 6), Azazel appears: h¿l db[w l?z¿az[l h?la¿ anl awl yn[ ^yda?. Milik translates as: "Then, he (sc. God?) punished, not 6us, but 'Azâzel, and has made him". Milik comments about the passage: "'Azâzel appears here in his expiatory role (Lev. 16:8, 10, 26), for he seems to be punished for the sins of the giants. He was evidently not a simple he-goat, but a giant who combined goat-like characteristics and those of man." The fact that not only a Qumran text in the Enoch tradition (the Book of Giants) but also one (4Q180) which clearly expresses the determinist view of the community identify the puzzling creature of Leviticus 16 with the archfiend of the angel story raises interesting possibilities for explaining the introduction of the notion of atonement into Jubilees' recension of the tale. It seems likely that the writer of Jubilees knew a version of the angel story in which Azazel played a part, but he modified it and turned it to his own purpose of establishing a legal and cultic precedent. He did not name Azazel, just as he did not name Shemihazah or any other angel. But he took the associations with Azazel and turned them into a lesson about the day of atonement and the need to atone for the earth after impure acts and shedding of blood. The nearest the BW comes to connecting Asael and Leviticus 16 is in specifying the place where he is bound as Dudael which, as Charles argued, may be the same as the yrwdh tyb of Tg. Ps. J. Lev 16:21-22 and y/wdwdj tyb in m. Yoma 6.8. Another possible allusion comes in 1 Enoch 10:8: "And the whole earth has been ruined by the teaching of the works of Azazel, and against him write down all sin [xa\t>i'ata]." The line may reflect Lev 16:21-22 (note especially µtafj lkl in v. 21). Nevertheless, the language of atonement is not employed in these parts of 1 Enoch; rather, before the flood the earth complains about the lawless beings on it (7:6), and the need for renewal of the corrupted earth is mentioned (1 Enoch 10:7, 20, 22). Even if 1 Enoch has such traces of Leviticus 16, Jubilees has greatly transformed the tradition. In Jubilees atonement is necessary as one could learn from the Mosaic law, and it has a positive function. Rather than laying all sin to the charge of one leader of the angels, Jubilees makes Noah an agent of atonement and calls on Israel to confess its sins annually in order to obtain pardon from God who is the just judge. In using the angel story to establish halakhic points and not to focus on eschatology, the author follows the same procedure he will use in chap. 7 where the sins that led to the flood will become the subject of laws about shedding and covering blood. III. The Angel Story in Jubilees and 1 Enoch 6-16 Can one make a case that Jubilees is dependent for the angel story on 1 Enoch 6-16? No definitive argument can be fashioned, but it does seem the most economical explanation for the data, despite the large-scale differences between what the two books say about the subject. First, the paragraphs about Jared and Enoch (Jub 4:15-26) and the other Enochic sections in Jubilees (5:1-10; 7:20-39; 10:1-17) provide evidence that 1 Enoch 1-36 lay before the author. They supply many details from one version of the angel story, including points such as the angels' descent in Jared's time, their sinful marriages with women, the gigantic children, the violence and blood, the punishments and Enoch's testimony against the watchers. The Jared pun is from 1 Enoch 6, the story itself is in 1 Enoch 6-11, and the testimony against the watchers is in 1 Enoch 12-16. Second, while Jubilees lacks many of the details of the stories in 1 Enoch 6-16 (such as the names Shimhazah and Asael, the specific teachings of Asael, the many angel names), it does in fact have the basic elements of the story about the angels who sinned with women and became the fathers of giants, as Dimant has shown. One could say that 1 Enoch 9:8-9 summarizes the story as it appears in Jubilees: "And they went in to the daughters of men together, and lay with those women, and became unclean, and revealed to them these sins. And the women bore giants, and thereby the whole earth has been filled with blood and iniquity." The theme of angelic instruction is not present in Jubilees 4-5, but it does appear in part (that is, Asael's military curriculum is not mentioned) in 8:1-4 where Kainan discovers rock inscriptions containing the watchers' astronomical teachings (see v. 3). Furthermore, Jubilees and 1 Enoch 6-16 share the nature of the punishments meted out to the angels and the giants. It may be that the theme of the evil spirits is also related: Jubilees may present them as emanations from the angels rather than from the bodies of the giants (although "fathers" in 10:5 could be ancestors) as one could infer from some expressions in 1 Enoch 15 (cf. v. 8). It is even possible that Jubilees reflects knowledge of the Azazel tradition in its teachings about atonement, and its emphasis on violation of created orders is reminiscent of the charge made against the angels in 1 Enoch 12-16. Third, while he knows much that appears in these chapters in 1 Enoch, the writer certainly does not reproduce everything and at times he opposes or strongly modifies an element in his source. So, his teaching that the angels descended for a righteous purpose and were corrupted later contradicts the reason given in 1 Enoch 6 and elsewhere in these chapters. Also, Jubilees downplays the eschatological implications of the story as they appear in 1 Enoch 6-16. The story becomes an example for moral exhortation and a basis for legal inferences in Jubilees, while in 1 Enoch 6-16 it serves to model the final judgment and conditions before it. It is reasonable to conclude, therefore that the writer of Jubilees was familiar with the BW, borrowed heavily from it, but transformed the material to meet the goals for which he was writing his book. |