Jubilees - Between Enoch and Moses: A Narrative Reading

There is no doubt that the biblical story in Genesis and Exodus, extending from creation to Sinai, forms the backbone of the narrative in Jubilees. Often analyses of Jubilees concentrate on this aspect, without paying sufficient attention to the narrative design in Jubilees itself. In this article some common tools in narratology are applied to focus on Jubilees as a whole. In the narrative structures it appears that the Enochic traditions are formative. Moses is placed in the front of the narrative as a witness not to the torah of the Pentateuch, but to a narrative shaped to give room for the Enochic traditions. Thus Jubilees mediates between the Mosaic and Enochic traditions, using Moses to emphasise the importance of Enoch. The two figures represent two different attitudes toward revelation, the unique concentration on Sinai as the centre of history and the common mythical world-view that the foundational events took place in primeval time.