15/08/2012 MP|Reader Checked
The Book of Jubilees takes up the Sabbath issue twice: at 2:17-33 and at 50:6-13. This re-occurance has sometimes puzzled scholars. Source-critical theories have been advanced to solve the problem, claiming that Jub 50 or parts of it were a later addition by an editor, who was, according to some scholars, a member of the Qumran community. In contrast, this article argues that these claims are unwarrented and that Jub 50:6-13 makes good sense as the original closing section of Jubilees . In detail, it is shown that the title quotation in Jub . 50:13 confirms to formal standards, that the frame created by Jub 2 and 50 corresponds to the sequence of Sabbath texts in the Pentateuch, that Jub 50 does not contradict the focus on Israel established by Jub 2, and finally that there are tensions between the regulations in Jub. 50:8,12 and halakhic Sabbath texts from Qumran, wcich do not suggets a Qumran provenance of this chapter.