ABSTRACT
Jubilees offers one of the most distinctive and influential understandings of the Temple Service known from Second Temple times. In its present form, the work was most probably completed around 160 BC. Although it was used and regarded as authoritative by the Qumran covenanters (see CD 16:2-4), internal evidence suggests that it did not necessarily originate with that group.1 After an introduction in which God addresses Moses directly, Jubilees is set forth as revelation given to Moses on Mount Sinai, delivered in a speech uttered in the first person by one of the angels of the Presence (2:1). Among the principal purposes of the book is the setting forth and inculcation of a peculiar solar calendar, for which Jubilees argues consistently and with some force.2 The calendar has a profound effect on the worship of the Temple as envisaged by Jubilees, since the timing of almost every ritual act and festival day is tied, through this calendar, to some particular event or nexus of events in Israel’s patriarchal past. Furthermore, the calendar expresses a heavenly order of things to which the earthly Temple Service is expected to conform, such that there should be complete harmony between the world above and the world below. The implications of this are far-reaching, and Jubilees loses no opportunity to address them.
