הלוח של ספר היובלים והמקרא

Since the mishmarot texts from Qumran have shown that the Jubilees calendar was employed by the sect, great interest has centered on the effort of A. Jaubert to prove that this calendar was employed in the priestly chronology of the Pentateuch and other Biblical books. Jaubert maintains that the key element in the Jubilees calendar lies in the liturgical significance of certain days of the week. This element is held to be evidenced 1) by the avoidance of dating any Biblical journeys on the Sabbath, 2) by the emphasis on Sunday, Wednesday and Friday as the "liturgical" days of the week. Jaubert attempts to prove this thesis inductively by tabulating the dates in Jubilees and the priestly books of the Bible. However, a closer examination of Jubilees shows that the author held the observance of the Sabbath to have begun only with Jacob and his children (2, 20–22). The significance of his dates lies in the day of the month, not of the week, which is never even referred to. Similarly, in her tabulation of Biblical dates, Jaubert ignores the fact that the majority of these dates have a religious significance because the days occur on festivals, the new moon, or the full moon, while the days of the week are incidental. The problems of the chronology of the Flood are in no way alleviated by applying the Jubilees calendar. The idea that the Biblical journeys were dated specifically to avoid violation of the Sabbath (according to the Jubilees calendar) becomes extremely doubtful when the examples cited by Jaubert, Skehan, and Goudoever are scrutinized. The writer finds these efforts to demonstrate the antiquity of the Jubilees calendar inductively completely unconvincing. The significant element of the Jubilees calendar, he believes, is to be found not in the "liturgical" days but in the fact that the Jubilees calendar eliminates the halakhic problems occasioned by the coincidence of the Sabbath and the festivals.