Qumran Calendars: A Survey of Scholarship 1980—2007

Abstract

The present article surveys the scholarship on the calendars represented in the Qumran texts and the Pseudepigrapha. The survey commences with the influential articles by VanderKam in the late 1970s, while relating also to Jaubert's earlier hypothesis. After a presentation and classification of the relevant texts, we proceed to elucidate the prominent calendrical and historical themes: the calendar in Jubilees and the Temple Scroll; the early history of the 364-day year in Judah; the non-Jewish origins of the 364-day calendar tradition; intercalation and the beginning of the day; and the various accounts of lunar phases in writings from Qumran. Broadly speaking, present-day research tends to emphasize the schematic aspect of the 364-day calendar tradition, renouncing the older view of this system as a `solar' calendar. In addition, Jaubert's hypothesis on the antiquity of the 364-day calendar, although still upheld in significant parts of current scholarship, is seriously challenged when viewed in a broader historical context. Finally, the Jewish astronomical and calendrical lore is increasingly explained on the background of astral sciences in the Hellenistic world—from Mesopotamia to Egypt.

The Temporal Turn in Ancient Judaism and Jewish Studies

“…Studies about the Second Temple period include important work by Talmon (1958;, Safrai (1965), Bushwick (1989); J. VanderKam (1998, which includes a detailed review of earlier scholarship), Kister (1999), S. Stern (2000;2002), Elior (2004), Noam (2003;, and others (Rietz 1958;Glessmer and Albani 1999;Neusner 2004;Scott 2005;Beckwith 2005;Grappe and Ingelaere 2006;Jacobus 2015). An overview of the study of Qumran calendars can be found in Ben-Dov and Saulnier (2008). This work has continued in recent years, especially by Ben-Dov (2008; and Ratzon (2012;, who have analyzed Second Temple calendrical texts in reference to Mesopotamian astronomical knowledge of the period.…”

The State of the Archaeological Debate at Qumran

“…Minna and Kenneth Lönnqvist proposed that the occupants of Qumran were part of an ancient sun cult (Lönnqvist and Lönnqvist 2002). They base their conclusions upon the layout of some of the longer rooms at Qumran, and the fact that passages within some of the Dead Sea Scrolls follow a solar calendar, rather than the more typical Jewish lunar calendar (Ben Dov and Saulnier 2008). An object that some interpret as a sundial was also discovered at Qumran, and this interpretation is often used to support their claim (Glessmer and Albani 1999: 408).…”