Episode 90: Dismantling Jubilees/Removing the Roadblocks to the Gospel
Although popular in some circles, the Book of Jubilees is both a mathematical nightmare and what would amount to a comedy of errors if it was funny. That being said, it opens a vitally important window into the ways that Jews in the early years of Hasmonean rule were looking at the Gentiles and allows us a glimpse of what mindsets led to the later development of the different sects within Judaism. Without this understanding, it is easy to make Mark 7:1-13 to be entirely about food instead of what it was really about–the ability of the Jewish believers in Yeshua/Jesus to take the Gospel into the Gentile world in fulfillment of the words of the Psalmists and the Prophets.
Transcript Below:
Before we move on in our Mark studies to chapters seven and eight, it’s important to address the elephant in the room—namely, the backlash against Jewish/Gentile relations in the Hellenistic era brought about by the tragic circumstances chronicled in I Maccabees. I am, of course, referring to the attempts by High Priest Jason (who paid the pagan king Antiochus Epiphanes in order to steal the position from his brother Onias) to not only make Jerusalem into a fully realized Greek city with all the trimmings but also to remove the Torah as the Law of the Land, and the violent political fallout that ensued as a result. We talked about that in greater depth last week and, although I don’t have a full grown-up teaching on the revolt and what led to it, I do have one available at contextforkids.com which I will link to the transcript when it posts on my blog on Friday.
Jubilees was written in the aftermath of the Maccabean revolt, during a time of xenophobic contempt and even hatred for the Gentiles and specifically the Greeks and Idumeans. Rome had not yet entered the picture in any real way although they were on friendly terms, having signed a mutual protection pact toward the end of the thirty-five years’ worth of on again off again hostilities with the Seleucids and their allies—one of which being the Edomites, which will weigh heavily into what was written into Jubilees.
Jubilees is a very important sectarian document of the Second Temple era. Now, what do I mean by “sectarian document?” A sectarian document is a writing that is considered to be authoritative or somewhat authoritative by a sect, or denomination, of a religion. I think the easiest way to describe this is through Mormonism. Mormons consider themselves to be the true representatives of Christianity, okay? Following the true teachings of Jesus. However, a great many of their beliefs do not line up with the Biblical account, and to justify this, they have sectarian documents—for example, the Book of Mormon and the Pearl of Great Price, etc.—that are considered authoritative and contain stories which serve to promote their specific beliefs. Within the Mormon church, you also have the FLDS—which even Mormons agree is a cult—and they have their own writings and doctrines that they consider to be authoritative. Of course, sectarian documents carry a lot of emotional weight because no one who has accepted one wants to believe that they have been hoodwinked. Despite a complete lack of archeological evidence or the DNA evidence among American Indian tribes that would prove their claims, people still cling to these documents. In fact, people will go to great lengths in order to substantiate them—the paleo Hebrew ten commandments found etched into a large rock in Los Lunas, NM, for example, is believed by archaeologists to be a Mormon forgery hoping to prove claims of an ancient Jewish civilization in the Americas given than there is no other proof. And those who claimed to have authenticated the site are both considered frauds and have been discredited. Still, people are very emotional about the stone and take it as authentic as a matter of faith. Another modern example is Hislop’s Two Babylons, which although completely discredited by history and archaeology and is Biblically unsupported still inspires books and teachings like crazy. I used to believe the stuff myself before I started actually studying ancient religions from the archaeological and literary record (primary sources) and the Bible in-depth. So, you know, we probably all have this sort of stuff in our heads that isn’t actually true and we don’t question it until forced to, and sometimes not even then!
Well, Greek and Roman era Judaism was no different than we are today in believing and promoting as true what appeals to us emotionally. Groups started splintering off as a reaction to increasing Hellenization of the culture—the Hasidim (of whom the most famous examples are the followers of Mattathias Hasmonea and his sons, the most famous of which being Judas Maccabeus), the Qumran sect (a priestly community in the wilderness who might be the Essenes mentioned by Josephus), the Sadducees (another priestly community, albeit corrupt), and the Pharisees (laymen who studied and promoted a certain adherence to the Law that the Qumran community thought made them a bunch of soft pansies). The degree of Hellenization differed within the various groups but Hellenization isn’t something that is always bad. After all, the teacher/disciple teaching lifestyle was directly lifted from the Greeks. It’s a good system. But the change from the Law as a system of wisdom for judges to a hard legal code can also be traced to Greco-Roman influences. How each sect reacted to this increasingly outside influence shows up in their writings and Jubilees, originally written in Hebrew (of which only small fragments exist) and translated into Greek and Syriac (we have a few Syriac passages) and then from Greek into Ethiopic and Latin. The only Greek we have of Jubilees comes in the form of quotes by early church fathers. We know that it was originally in Hebrew because that’s what our oldest fragments are written in. The Syriac is obviously a direct translation from Hebrew because it contains no Greek loan words or markers, which both the Ethiopic and Latin versions are full of. We have a complete Ethiopic text and about a quarter of it in Latin and some passages in Syriac. So, if it were not for the Ethiopian church, like I Enoch, we wouldn’t even be discussing this as Jubilees was not popular enough among the Jews to survive, and with good reason. We’ll see why.
Jubilees, also called “Little Genesis” was written during a fairly narrow time period by a forerunner of the Qumran sect or by the early Hasidim movement, someone who had in-depth knowledge of Temple practices and access to the Samaritan Torah. Really narrows down the candidates. Obviously, it is as old or older than the Hebrew fragments but it makes reference to certain events that mirror the Maccabean revolt and it quotes from I Enoch (another wildly popular Second Temple era sectarian document) so it was written after that. It is fairly pro-Jewish establishment and so it has to be before the big brouhaha between John Hyrcanus and the Teacher of Righteousness and the split between John Hyrcanus and the Pharisees. It can’t be a genuinely canonical document, however, because there are too many chronological mistakes, anachronisms (things that don’t belong in the Genesis-era), and it disagrees with itself and the Bible on a fairly regular basis—and not just a few times. We either have to accept Genesis as presented in the Torah or Jubilees but we can’t accept both. Whoever wrote it, wrote it in order to explain and demand adherence to the peculiar beliefs of their splinter sect of Judaism and specifically a calendar that was flawed for the same reasons as the calendar they were attacking—but very few would have picked up on it during those times whereas anyone can see it now. They accepted it as authoritative not because it was inerrant, because it is full of errors, but because it backed their fervently held beliefs of what Judaism needed to be in order to be faithful to God in the midst of an increasingly Hellenistic environment. They saw what HP Jason was able to do—bringing a gymnasium into the holy city where men competed with one another in the nude, replacing the Law of Moses, and creating a situation where their country was eventually overrun and the Temple defiled by pagans. In the opinion of the sect members (because if it was just one guy then nothing would have been preserved), holding to a hard line that went beyond Torah was absolutely necessary to their survival and so the language used by the author to describe their desired reforms was steeped in manufactured tradition and an utter white-washing of the lives of the patriarchs. Jubilees is a romantic bit of propaganda, not only pro-their positions on how the Jewish life should be lived but also raising the patriarchs to mythical levels of virtue (and especially Jacob, oh my) unsupported by the Torah and, because all propaganda needs a good villain, the vilification of Esau and Reuben beyond that which is even remotely justified in the Torah. Why? Because the Edomites fought against them alongside the Greeks, just as they had fought alongside the Babylonians before the exile. And Reuben, the firstborn, had to be utterly discredited in order to justify Jubilees’ near-worship of Levi and over the top promotion of Judah—which was important in stirring up hope in a future Messiah even though the Davidic kingly line had descended into such terrible wickedness.
Like II Maccabees, which we discussed last week, myths and legends and outright manipulations were and are shamelessly promoted by sects in order to bolster their views and to control how they want people to look at history. Alexander Hislop did the same thing in the 19th century when he wrote The Two Babylons, where he completely manufactured a racist and scandalous life story of Nimrod, utterly unsupported by either the Bible or by actual history or archaeology, in order to discredit Catholicism and to promote his personal views as the ones to be followed. As Hislop was a member of a recently formed splinter group himself, we see the common pattern. Again, we could also talk about the writings associated with Mormonism, that claim to be of divine origins, or the teachings of Jim Jones or any number of other cult leaders who rewrote God in their own image.
Now, sometimes people get the wrong idea about sectarian writings, as though the Jewish people are different in this regard than the rest of the world but of course they aren’t. They wrote fictions about the Bible in order to justify what they believed and about how everyone should live. And they were penned pseudepigraphically—or under a false name, generally that of a famous individual like Enoch and especially the patriarchs and Daniel. This was a very popular form of writing and we see a lot of it popping up in the Dead Sea Scrolls and with the Ethiopian Jews and Ethiopian Christians. We cry foul at this sort of thing nowadays, but we mustn’t assume that they shared our prejudices against this form of “getting your point across.” Different cultures, different times, different values, different outlook. These are called Judeo-Hellenistic works with good reason because, one way or another, these works were all the result of the clash and cooperation between Second-Temple Judaism and the greater Greco-Roman culture.
However, with Jubilees we should absolutely cry foul because it represents a deliberate deception on the part of the author who created a “thus saith the Lord” document and attributed all of his added doctrines to be written on the “heavenly tablets.” As this was penned with the intention of discrediting and damning others who disagreed, this can’t just be called a normal work of midrashic fiction. Jubilees was a hoax designed to gather a following under the auspices of being divine revelation to Moses. BUT, that doesn’t mean we dismiss the whole thing because it is an important window into Second-Temple era Jewish beliefs that we see echoed in the Bible. In fact, it’s going to greatly help us to understand Mark chapters seven and eight.
But before we go there, I want to briefly talk about the problems with Jubilees—this will in no way be exhaustive. In fact, I am leaving a lot more on the table than I am picking up. Jubilees has a lot of chronological problems, meaning timelines—and for this part I will be citing the work of the late Dr Leslie McFall, a lecturer in Hebrew and the Old Testament, and a researcher at Cambridge University specializing in Biblical chronologies. The paper is called The Chronology of Jubilees, where he charts everything out and makes notes of the discrepancies with the Genesis text, which I will link in the transcript because it is online along with his other unpublished articles. He was a big kahuna in Biblical chronology research. https://lmf12.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/chronology-of-jubilees.pdf
Timeline problems—Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and Benjamin all have multiple timelines within Jubilees for various reasons including multiple birth dates and ages at events that don’t match up with one another. Not only doesn’t Jubilees agree with itself but it also doesn’t agree with the Bible consistently and when we are looking at the timelines of the pre-flood generations, some of the ages of “begetting” line up only with the Samaritan Torah—but not consistently. Honestly, his timelines are a hot mess. Using his math and comparing his numbers sometimes with the Bible and sometimes with his own claims (1) Abraham was 227 years old when he died instead of 175, (2) Isaac was born when Abraham was 111 instead of 100, (3) Sarah weaned Isaac when he was 13 (ew), (4) Jacob was 126 when he went down to Egypt instead of 130 because of errors that were now piling on top of one another, (5) Jacob’s children were all born within thirteen (or seven, depending on how you read it) years, leaving Joseph as a baby when they departed instead of a child whom the Bible claimed was old enough to bow before Esau, instead of them being born over 20 years (or thirteen), as the Bible claims because the writer forgets the six additional years served for the flocks and seems to have them magically appear overnight—there are actually people who debate whether Jacob served a full seven years before he married Leah or not, leading to the debate (6) by his chronology, Dan was born after Judah (three verses after he claimed Judah was born before Dan) (7) Jubilees states that Dinah was twelve when she was raped but his own chronology says she was nine, (8) Peleg became Reu’s father when he was only twelve years old.
Let’s talk about some, only some, outright errors because this is only 50 minutes long. In Jub 5:9 the days given for man are 110 years and not 120 and according to his chronology, Noah builds the ark in like a year. In 6:14, Noah is commanded to perform the Tamid offering every morning and evening forever. That’s two male lambs a day. He originally brought seven males on the ark. Even if they had twins during that year and all of them were male. He would still only have 21 male lambs and he already sacrificed one of them when he debarked. Within two weeks he would no longer be able to perform the Tamid—but this is just one of many anachronisms forced backward into Genesis from Exodus. In 6:23 there are four additional festivals to be celebrated on the four days inserted into the calendar that are commanded to be celebrated forever, one every thirteen weeks. In 13:17 Jubilees claims that Lot left Abraham and that Abraham was sad about it, whereas Genesis clearly says that Abraham sent Lot away. In 22:16, they are forbidden to have any dealings whatsoever with Gentiles and especially don’t eat with them. This is an important Second Temple era innovation to Judaism and is found nowhere in the Bible.
Now, this is one of my favorites. And it utterly destroys the integrity of the entire book because this prophecy fell flat.
Jub 23:26-29 And in those days the children shall begin to study the laws, And to seek the commandments, And to return to the path of righteousness. And the days shall begin to grow many and increase amongst those children of men Till their days draw nigh to one thousand years. And to a greater number of years than (before) was the number of the days. And there shall be no old man
Nor one who is <not> satisfied with his days, For all shall be (as) children and youths. And all their days they shall complete and live in peace and in joy, And there shall be no Satan nor any evil destroyer; For all their days shall be days of blessing and healing.
Background on this. The Jews were free of foreign tyranny for the first time in hundreds of years and they were under the High Priesthood of the Hasmoneans who would not claim kingship until one or two more generations depending on whether this was written during the time of Simon or John Hyrcanus. It was a time of great hope because the Hasidim, the ones who zealously fought against the Seleucids and their allies, were very seriously faithful Jews and they were all waiting for the Davidic Messiah-King and the final day of judgment, mentioned in the previous verses I shared. Right now, everything was awesome. They had their own choice of the high priest, their own law, and things were getting back to how they felt it should be after terrible oppression. Torah scrolls were being rewritten after having been burned, It was a time of incredible hope. This was written in the midst of that. A “prophecy” that as the Jews would study Torah and increase righteousness, that lifespans would increase to pre-flood levels and even higher. Obviously, Torah study has exponentially increased among the Jews and they still can’t break 120 years any more than the rest of us can
In 26:34, Esau’s blessing from Isaac is given an addendum to promise what a great sinner he would be. Remember, his descendants fought on the side of both Babylon and the Seleucids and were conquered by John Hyrcanus. This is propaganda. Jubilees also later claims that when Esau left Isaac and Rebekah, that he took all of their animals with him and left them in utter poverty. And that he waged war on Jacob and that Jacob killed him. Laban, on the other hand, is practically portrayed as a saint—with it written on the aforementioned “heavenly tablets” that the younger daughter should never be married off before the older. This, along with not mentioning the idol incident or Leah’s subsequent harsh treatment of Rebekah, made it possible for the author to talk about how perfect a wife Leah was and how she was never anything but gentle and sweet. Why was this altered? Because Leah was the mother of Judah and Levi, who were also creatively embellished in the text for the sake of promoting the uncontested authority of the priesthood and the hope for the coming Davidic Messiah. In fact, the slaughter of the residents of Shechem was rewritten in order to make it look like Levi was behaving righteously and the incident between Judah and Tamar completely disregards the Bible in claiming that neither Er nor Onan every had sexual relations with that woman. Thus, she was a virgin when Judah went in to her (and he gets a total pass on that, btw) and thus not guilty of uncovering the nakedness of his son.
In fact, the author has a real fixation on sexual sin and repeats the injunction to burn indecent women a bit more than I would say is healthy. Okay, a lot more. In fact, this guy is super focused on nudity, circumcision, festivals, honoring parents, refraining from contact with gentiles, and especially with intermarriage, oh and the very legalistic Sabbath laws in the final chapter. It would seem that this is very much a backlash stemming from the intrusion of the Hellenistic gymnasium where nudity was practiced, the undoing of circumcisions, young people flocking to Hellenistic ways in defiance of parental traditions, and a desire for it to never happen again. The focus and backdating of all the festivals (and even the repurposing of them) seems to be an attempt on the author’s part to reinvigorate the festivals in the eyes of his fellow Jews by giving them more meaning than is otherwise found in the text. Shavuot, for example, was rewritten as a yearly covenant renewal ceremony from the time of Noah and the giving of the rainbow. Abraham made booths for his hired men to celebrate Sukkot. Jacob instituted Yom Kippur as a day of mourning when they believed that Jacob was dead and Dinah and Bilhah both died of grief. Which, when I think about it is odd because before that Jacob was given heavenly tablets that taught him the future of all his progeny—so why didn’t he know that Joseph wasn’t dead? But there’s a problem with what was written because it is not written as a Biblical account where the sins and mistakes and faithlessness of the patriarchs are related in living color and where the Psalms and the prophets speak of a time when the Gentiles must be brought into the fold.
When read as an effort to get the pendulum swinging far from Hellenism, this all becomes more understandable as propaganda literature—complete with bad guys that are currently relatable and dangers that go back farther and we could have avoided if only we hadn’t turned away from the one true calendar and our four extra feast days after Moses died. And speaking of the calendar, let’s go there:
6:32-38 For I have written in the book of the first law, in that which I have written for thee, that thou shouldst celebrate it in its season, one day in the year, and I explained to thee its sacrifices that the children of Israel should remember and should celebrate it throughout their generations in this month, one day in every year. And on the new moon of the first month, and on the new moon of the fourth month, and on the new moon of the seventh month, and on the new moon of the tenth month are the days of remembrance, and the days of the seasons in the four divisions of the year. These are written and ordained as a testimony for ever. And Noah ordained them for himself as feasts for the generations for ever, so that they have become thereby a memorial unto him. And on the new moon of the first month he was bidden to make for himself an ark, and on that (day) the earth became dry and he opened (the ark) and saw the earth. And on the new moon of the fourth month the mouths of the depths of the abyss beneath were closed. And on the new moon of the seventh month all the mouths of the abysses of the earth were opened, and the waters began to descend into them. And on the new moon of the tenth month the tops of the mountains were seen, and Noah was glad. And on this account he ordained them for himself as feasts for a memorial for ever, and thus are they ordained. And they placed them on the heavenly tablets, each had thirteen weeks; from one to another (passed) their memorial, from the first to the second, and from the second to the third, and from the third to the fourth. And all the days of the commandment will be two and fifty weeks of days, and (these will make) the entire year complete. Thus it is engraven and ordained on the heavenly tablets. And there is no neglecting (this commandment) for a single year or from year to year. And command thou the children of Israel that they observe the years according to this reckoning- three hundred and sixty-four days, and (these) will constitute a complete year, and they will not disturb its time from its days and from its feasts; for everything will fall out in them according to their testimony, and they will not leave out any day nor disturb any feasts. But if they do neglect and do not observe them according to His commandment, then they will disturb all their seasons and the years will be dislodged from this (order), [and they will disturb the seasons and the years will be dislodged] and they will neglect their ordinances.
And all the children of Israel will forget and will not find the path of the years, and will forget the new moons, and seasons, and sabbaths and they will go wrong as to all the order of the years.
For I know and from henceforth will I declare it unto thee, and it is not of my own devising; for the book (lies) written before me, and on the heavenly tablets the division of days is ordained, lest they forget the feasts of the covenant and walk according to the feasts of the Gentiles after their error and after their ignorance. For there will be those who will assuredly make observations of the moon -how (it) disturbs the seasons and comes in from year to year ten days too soon. For this reason the years will come upon them when they will disturb (the order), and make an abominable (day) the day of testimony, and an unclean day a feast day, and they will confound all the days, the holy with the unclean, and the unclean day with the holy; for they will go wrong as to the months and sabbaths and feasts and jubilees. For this reason I command and testify to thee that thou mayst testify to them; for after thy death thy children will disturb (them), so that they will not make the year three hundred and sixty-four days only, and for this reason they will go wrong as to the new moons and seasons and sabbaths and festivals, and they will eat all kinds of blood with all kinds of flesh.
So, here’s the problem. He complains that the lunisolar calendar practiced by the Jews is evil because it loses ten days a year and has to be corrected. So he claims that in heaven they keep a 364-day calendar, because that’s going to be perfect and will never need an adjustment. And, you know, back when this was written that probably sounded legit but any first-grader knows that there are 365 days in a year and kids just a bit older than that know that there is still another day that needs to be added every four to keep the calendar from getting loopy. So, at best, this calendar would still need an intercalary month added once every 24 years in order to stay on track. He says NOTHING about this problem. Total double standard. The truth is that the solar years were created by God in a very inconvenient fashion to deal with mathematically and so we need the sun and the moon with the feast days not always falling on Wednesdays and Fridays and the days of the year always being the same. I suppose it keeps us from just making a calendar and never having to think about it. And check out the cheap shot at the end—they will stop observing this heavenly tablet calendar and eating blood and pig will follow soon thereafter. Did I mention the word propaganda?
But now that we’ve had some fun, let’s talk about why Jubilees is important to the study of the Gospels. By the time that the events of Mark seven and eight occurred, relations between Jews and Gentiles were devastated after the (1) Babylonian exile, (2) the Persian oppression under Haman, (3) the Seleucid movements to eliminate Torah law, violate the Temple, and slaughter the Jews on the Sabbaths when they would not fight back, and (4) Roman rule under the murderous Idumean Herod the Great and his sons, and under the brutal Pontius Pilate. It had been a rough almost 600 years. No one wanted to hear the words of the Prophets and Psalmists clearly stating that the Gentiles would be brought to the faith. There was great resentment, fear and anger toward the Gentiles. Even a cursory reading of the Qumran sects’ writings shows that even the most faithful priestly Jews were hungering and thirsting for revenge of the worst sort. Although Jubilees is not canon and amounts to a deliberate deception or the rantings of a madman, it absolutely reflects the mood and some of the beliefs of the time. Jubilees wasn’t written in a vacuum. People felt this way—and because they felt that way, it resulted in beliefs that would be held, to one degree or another, by the various factions. The static calendar, for example, was preferred by the Sadducees, who wanted all feasts to fall on Wednesdays and Fridays—except first fruits which was always, for them, on Sunday. The Qumran Covenanters would never ever have dealings with gentiles and they also believed that having sex with one’s spouse on the sabbath to be a sin (as did the Sadducees) and would have held with the other extra-Biblical Sabbath regulations as well as they wouldn’t even save someone’s life if it required effort. The Shammai school of Pharisees was ardently anti-Gentile compared to the more liberal Hillelites, but neither was going out of their way to make converts of non-Jews. I hope you can see why, even though Jubilees is not legit for doctrine, why it is absolutely legit for testing the waters of late Second Temple era Judaism. Jubilees explains a lot of what they believed about Gentiles and why.
So, in Mark seven and eight, we first have the famous incident over the Pharisees rebuking Yeshua because His disciples are eating with unwashed hands (while Luke claims that Yeshua wasn’t either). And they washed hands not because of any Biblical commandment but because they were concerned with becoming contaminated by Gentile defilement in the marketplace. They decided that touching something touched by a Gentile could transfer impurity to one’s hands, which would then in turn contaminate their food. Of course, this isn’t Biblical and next week we will talk about why but this amounts to a huge problem for Yeshua and the disciples who, later on in the chapter, end up in the regions of Tyre, Sidon, and the Decapolis. If one can defile themselves by coming into contact with such and such in the marketplace, how on earth will they preach the Gospel? How will they share table fellowship with Gentiles? How will they lay hands on the sick and heal them? How will the Gospel be taken to the ends of the earth as prophesied by Isaiah?
These attitudes had to be dealt a death blow. Being ritually clean beyond Biblical standards would mean an end to the spread of the Gospel. It was so deeply ingrained that even ten years after the Resurrection and Ascension, Peter still has to be given a vision in order to even begin to cope with the reality of the situation. And Jubilees and other sectarian writings are a vital window into the problem that would have stopped the Gospel dead in its tracks—and certainly would have made the miracles worked by Yeshua in gentile lands impossible.