the-bible-and-the-dead-sea-scrolls

JAMES C. VANDERKAM 489
Psalm 90, about the people’s loss of knowledge in their old age—a combination
not found in the psalm. 78
Third, 4Q228 may also name Jubilees as an authority for what is said
in it. As noted above, the fragmentary work has been entitled, “Text with
a Citation of Jubilees”; the title arises from the fact that it may refer to
Jubilees by its Hebrew name in frag. 1, col. 1, line 1 (Myt(h t[w]q[lxmb)
and, more intriguingly, frag. 1, col. 1, line 9, where the first word of the
title (it is the last word in a line and the beginning of the next line is lost)
follows one of the citation formulas that often introduces scriptural citations
in texts from Qumran: twqlxmb bwtk Nk yk. 79 The contexts in
both cases are largely lost so that it is precarious to draw firm conclusions,
but it is reasonable to think that the writer is referring to Jubilees.
Fourth, Jub. 3:8–14, which connects the legislation of Leviticus 12 (the
days a woman is impure and not permitted to touch holy things after
bearing a boy or a girl) with the times when the man and the woman
entered the garden of Eden, may have served as the source for the same
material in 4Q265 (4QSD frag. 7, col. 2, lines 11–17). Fifth, Jubilees, with
its practice of dating covenants to the third month, especially the fifteenth
day in it, may also have inspired the Qumranic exercise of renewing the
covenant annually on the festival of weeks.
Nevertheless, there are also indications that Jubilees was not followed
on all points at Qumran. First, its calendrical teachings were accepted in
part (the 364-day solar calendar), but also partially rejected (its prohibition
of lunar calculations). Second, 4Q252 contains a clear passage,
which corrects a detail in Jubilees’ chronology for the flood. Jubilees, with
Genesis, reports that the flood waters remained on the earth for five
months or 150 days (5:27; cf. Gen 8:3–4), from day 17 of the second
month (the beginning of the flood) until the same day in the seventh
month; but in the 364-day calendar 152 days would have lapsed from
2/17 to 7/17 when the waters began to abate. 4Q252 frag. 1, col. 1, lines
7–10 explains more exactly that the waters were on the earth for one
hundred fifty days until 7/14, a Tuesday—a total that works out perfectly
in the 364-day system. The flood waters then decreased for two days—a
Wednesday and a Thursday; on Friday (7/17), the ark came to rest on the
mountains of Hurarat. Thus, whatever authority Jubilees may have possessed
at Qumran, it did not prevent the writer of 4Q252 from making
its chronology more exact.
78. Some words from the verse are preserved in 4Q221 3 lines 2–4. See VanderKam
and Milik, ibid., (DJD 13), 70–72.
79. For the text, see ibid., 178–79; for a discussion, see 181.