Texts in Conversation
Exodus gives a recipe for incense used by priests in the sanctuary. Jubilees places this incense in the time of Enoch before the flood, following its pattern where the patriarchs are shown following the Torah before it was given to Moses.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Exodus 30:36
Hebrew Bible
33 Whoever makes perfume like it and whoever puts any of it on someone not a priest will be cut off from his people.’” 34 The Lord said to Moses, “Take spices, gum resin, onycha, galbanum, and pure frankincense of equal amounts 35 and make it into an incense, a perfume, the work of a perfumer. It is to be finely ground, and pure and sacred. 36 You are to beat some of it very fine and put some of it before the ark of the testimony in the tent of meeting where I will meet with you; it is to be most holy to you. 37 And the incense that you are to make, you must not make for yourselves using the same recipe; it is to be most holy to you, belonging to the Lord.
Date: 750–400 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Jubilees 4:25
Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions
24 And on account of it (God) brought the waters of the flood upon all the land of Eden; for there he was set as a sign and so that he should testify against all the human beings, so that he should recount all the deeds of the generations until the day of condemnation. 25 And he burned the incense of the sanctuary, (even) sweet spices acceptable before the Lord on the Mount. 26 For the Lord has four places on the earth, the Garden of Eden, and the Mount of the East, and this mountain on which you are today, Mount Sinai, and Mount Zion (which) will be sanctified in the new creation for a sanctification of the earth; through it the earth will be sanctified from all (its) guilt and its impurity throughout the generations of the world.
Date: 170–125 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... our text is saying that Enoch, having been allowed to enter the Garden of Eden, immediately burned “incense of the sanctuary”—that is, the correct mixture of spices that can only be offered in a proper sanctuary (Exodus 30:32, 34-37)—at its appropriate time, the evening (Exodus 30:8). But in the course of Jubilees’ transmission, the apposition “the Garden of Eden, the mountain of the east” apparently came to be misunderstood as referring to two earthly sanctuaries instead of one. This would explain the contradiction between the assertion here that there are four places on earth that belong to God, that is, four proper sanctuaries, and Jubilees 8:19, where it is said that there are only three: Eden, Sinai, and Zion ..."
James L. Kugel, A Walk through Jubilees: Studies in the Book of Jubilees and the World of Its Creation (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 50.
* 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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