Prayers in Jubilees

Jubilees retell the biblical story in Genesis and the early chapters of Exodus, presenting an adapted version of the biblical narrative from the creation of the world to Moses' life in Egypt. This author expands the biblical story in several ways, including the placement of much legislation from later parts of the Torah into the patriarchal narratives and many narrative expansions of the basic biblical story. This chapter first offers a working definition of a prayer text, then survey those texts in Jubilees which we consider as prayers, and finally to determine the particular orientation of these prayers, and the theological contribution they make to the understanding of this text. In a discussion of prayer texts from Qumran, Eileen Schuller lists the following prayers in Jubilees, but notes that nothing of them remains in the Hebrew texts found at Qumran: prayer of Noah; prayer of Abraham; prayer of Moses. Keywords: Abraham; biblical story; Eileen Schuller; Exodus; Genesis; Jubilees; Moses' life; Noah; prayer text; Qumran