Part 13

book.]

8. DATE OF (a) THE ORIGINAL TEXT AND (b) OF THE VERSIONS. (a) Jubilees was written between 153 B.C. and the year of Hyrcanus' breach with the Pharisees. (1) It was written during the pontificate of the Maccabean family, and not earlier than 155 B.C., when this office was assumed by Jonathan the Maccabee. For in xxxii. 1, Levi is called a 'priest of the Most High God.' Now the only Jewish high-priests who bore this title were the Maccabean, who appear to have assumed it as reviving the order of Melchizedek when they displaced the Zadokite order of Aaron. Despite the objections of the Pharisees, it was used by the Maccabean princes down to Hyrcanus II (Jos. Ant. xvi. 6.2). (2) It was written before 96 B.C.; for since our author was of the strictest sect a Pharisee and at the same time an upholder of the Maccabean pontificate, Jubilees cannot have been written later than 96, when the Pharisees and Alexander Jannaeus were openly engaged in mortal strife. (3) It was written before the public breach between Hyrcanus and the Pharisees when Hyrcanus joined the Sadducean party. As Hyrcanus died in 105, our book was written between 153 and 105.

But it is possible to define these limits more closely. The book presupposes as its historical background the most flourishing period of the Maccabean hegemony -such as that under Simon and Hyrcanus. The conquest of Edom, which was achieved by the latter, is referred to in xxxviii. 14. Again our text reflects accurately the intense hatred of Judah towards the Philistines in the second century B.C. It declares that they will fall into the hands of the righteous nation, and we learn from I Macc. and Josephus that Ashdod and Gaza were destroyed by Hyrcanus and Alexander Jannaeus respectively. But it is in the destruction of Samaria, which is adumbrated in the destruction of Shechem, xxx. 4-6, that we are to look for the true terminus a quo. Now all accounts agr