עיצוב מאורעות דור המבול

One of the current research trends is to view the reworking of biblical stories in extra-biblical books as commentaries. A comparison of the story of the flood in the Book of Jubilees and in Qumran fragment 4Q252 shows that the former, unlike the latter, did not attempt to come to grips with the chronological problems in the biblical story or try to explain them. Instead, it inserts dates which are important to its own system from an halakhic point of view, such as the four days of remembrance, although the insertions contradict the plain reading of the biblical text. Hence the conclusion: the rewrite is not pure exegesis or commentary, but rather "tendentious commentary". This conclusion enables us to understand the reworking of the flood story in Jubilees. According to its version, the sins of the generation of the flood were murder and the consumption of blood. They led to the land becoming defiled and the purpose of the flood was to cleanse it. The covenant with Noah after the flood was not an exhibition of divine grace, but a conditional covenant to ensure that those sins would not be repeated. A neglect of the prohibition to consume blood and a reluctance to punish sinners will lead to a further extinction of mankind, albeit not by a flood. Furthermore, the prohibition of blood according to Jubilees includes the demand that no blood may appear on the clothing of a slaughterer or of a person bringing a sacrifice, as well as the requirement to place the blood on the altar or cover it. Those requirements are thus part of the covenant with Noah. In the Aramaic Testament of Levi these requirements are also listed; however, they are not included in the prohibition of the consumption of blood. It would therefore seem that it was the disagreement with rabbinic halakha regarding blood that led to the tendentious reworking of the flood story as it is given in Jubilees, whereas the Aramaic Testament of Levi takes no stand in the dispute.