Viewed from Another Angle: Purity and Impurity in the Book of Jubilees

This article is a response to several points made by Liora Ravid in an article that appeared in an earlier issue of this journal ('Purity and Impurity in the Book of Jubilees', JSP 13.1 [2002], pp. 61-86). The principal objection to Ravid's attempt to read Jubilees' approach to purity/impurity in light of second-century BCE concerns is that Jubilees is deeply influenced by the scriptures it was rewriting. The author tried to reflect the situation in Genesis and the first half of Exodus when there was no sanctuary and thus no ritual prescriptions regarding purity to accompany it. As a result, Jubilees should not be read in the first instance as a rejection of the second-century temple cult with its laws of purity and means for purification.