Genesis 1 in Jubilees 2

After the full text of Jubilees became available for western scholarly consumption in the mid-nineteenth century, it soon became the object of sundry comparative studies. The earliest estimates of its date placed it in the first century CE (Dillmann, for one), but later R.H. Charles made the classic case for dating the book to the end of the second century BCE.' Whichever of these dates one preferred, it was obvious to all that Jubilees postdated the Hebrew version of Genesis-Exodus and predated the earliest rabbinic and patristic exegetical works. Thus, the book stood at an ancient point in the history of interpreting Genesis-Exodus. It embodied both unique exegetical stands and hermeneutical moves that were familiar from later texts. Unlike most later commentaries, however, Jubilees bills itself, not merely as an explication of the divinely given words to Moses, but as revelation: its words come from the tablets of heaven and are mediated to Moses by an angel of the presence (1:29-2:1). The evidence from Qumran helps us to see how one group considered Jubilees authoritative: not only have remnants of 14 or 15 copies of the book been found there,2 but the Damascus Document certainly cites it as an authority, and 4Q2283 probably does as well. From the point of view of scriptural exegesis, one of the more interesting passages for comparative purposes is the creation account in Jubilees 2. It is obviously based upon Genesis 1-2, but