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Jubilees echoes Isaiah by repeatedly invoking the phrase “the Torah and the Testimony,” using the obscure phrase where divine instruction is hidden in a faithful remnant. Jubilees tries to portray itself with the same kind of authority as the prophet.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Isaiah 8:16
Hebrew Bible
14 He will become a sanctuary, but a stone that makes a person trip and a rock that makes one stumble—to the two houses of Israel. He will become a trap and a snare to the residents of Jerusalem. 15 Many will stumble over the stone and the rock, and will fall and be seriously injured, and will be ensnared and captured.” 16 Tie up the testimony32, seal the official record of God’s instructions, and give it to my followers. 17 I will wait patiently for the Lord, who has rejected the family of Jacob; I will wait for him.
Date: 740–450 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Jubilees 1:4
Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions
3 And He called to Moses on the seventh day from within the cloud, and the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a flaming fire on the top of the mountain. 4 And Moses was on the mountain for forty days and forty nights, and God showed him the past and the future and told him about all the divisions of time of the Torah and of the testimony. 5 And He said: 'Pay close attention to every word which I shall speak to you on this mountain, and write them in a book so that their descendants may know that I have not abandoned them for all the evil which they have done by breaking the covenant which I establish between Me and your children for their generations today on Mount Sinai.
Date: 170–125 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... The expression “according to the Torah and to the Testimony,” which appears not only in the title-sentence but again in Jubilees 1:4-5; 1:26, 29 and later verses, was an important one for the overall stance of the book ... Jubilees’ reference to “the Torah and the Testimony” is based on a somewhat mysterious verse in the book of Isaiah, where God says: “Bind up the testimony, seal up the instruction (torah) with My disciples” (Isaiah 8:16). Even today, it is not clear what Isaiah was referring to, nor—more to the point—is anyone sure what the author of Jubilees meant by quoting this phrase ..."
James L. Kugel, A Walk through Jubilees: Studies in the Book of Jubilees and the World of Its Creation (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 2–3.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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