ספר היובלים בהקשר הלניסטי

A close examination of the Book of Jubilees, written in the land of Israel during the Hellenistic period, reveals the author's acquaintance with the Hellenistic world. The author's goal was to distance the Jewish world from Hellenistic culture using methodology he acquired from that culture. In describing the division of the world among the sons of Noah, the author draws the then known and generally accepted map of the world - the Ionian map. A similar description of the world's division, found in the Genesis Apocryphon scroll from Qumran, lacks the geographical details known from Hellenistic science; Jubilees' author inserted these Hellenistic scientific details while reworking (and translating into Hebrew) the Apocryphon. Use of the Ionian map is intended to enhance the Jewish people's position while denigrating the rest of the world. It allows the author of Jubilees to magnify the importance of Shem's name and role while discrediting the names and roles of Japheth and Ham. Shem receives the ideal continent and its most fertile region falls into the hands of Arpachshad, an ancestor of Abraham. This region also includes the navel of the Earth, Mount Zion. Ham and Japheth's portions have a climate that is either too hot or too cold. The map also allows Jubilees' author to ignore all the peoples mentioned in Genesis X, and to censure Canaan for invading the land of Israel. The author of Jubilees was also familiar with Hellenistic-Jewish literature and was aware of its efforts to achieve a rapprochement between Judaism and Hellenism. He uses the same tools employed by the Hellenistic-Jewish historians for reconciliation - the identification of biblical heroes with Greek mythological figures and the concept of a culture hero. But his intention is to reject and negate acceptance of the foreign culture. The author identifies biblical Nimrod with Ninus, the first king of the first empire in Greek historiography; however this identification is not intended to equate the Bible with Greek history, but rather to defame the rest of mankind, their wars and conquests. Jubilees also rejected traditions accepted in Jewish Hellenism that identified Abraham as the father of astrology and Noah as the founder of herbal medicine, in order to forbid astrology and herbal medicine for his readers. Furthermore, the presentation of Jubilees as Torah and Teudah constitutes a reply to a thesis found among the Hellenistic-Jewish philosophers. Torah and Teudah - predestined history and the halakhic laws that shaped that history - is the antithesis to the Jewish philosophers' pre-creation logos wherein only moral laws shape nature.