Calendar and Dates in Jubilees’ Garden of Eden Story

Updated by: 
Shlomo Brand
Research notes: 
SB/not checked/07/10/2021
Reference type: 
Journal Article
Author(s): 
Ray, Walter D.
year: 
2021
Full title: 

Calendar and Dates in Jubilees’ Garden of Eden Story

Journal / Book Title || Series Title: 
Harvard Theological Review
Volume: 
114
Issue / Series Volume: 
3
Abbreviated Series Name: 
HTR
Place of Publication: 
Cambridge
Publisher: 
Cambridge University Press
Pages: 
305-327
Work type: 
Non review
Abstract: 

Calendar dates in Jubilees’ Garden of Eden story have led some to question the nature of the book’s presupposed calendar and others to conclude that the passage is redacted. Close reading of the text shows that the passage was carefully constructed and the work of one author who took pains not to jeopardize the calendar promoted elsewhere in the book. Confusion arises when scholars subordinate the calendar to the book’s chronological system; they should be kept distinct. The author uses the recurrence of calendar dates to connect events to each other typologically and to an underlying narrative pattern, which, like the calendar, is founded on the annual cycle of agricultural labor.

Primary Texts: Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha: 
Composition / Author: 
Jubilees
URL: 
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/harvard-theological-review/article/calendar-and-dates-in-jubilees-garden-of-eden-story/5B9726D14F0127A0ACB692A0809A371D
Label: 
11/10/2021
Record number: 
107 994