possible, alternatively, that the Jewish calendar was controlled in this period by
the council of elders or Sanhedrin (provided a permanent and well-defined
institution of this kind was really in existence).^132
After the destruction of the Temple in 70CEand the collapse of the high
priesthood, of the Sanhedrin (if it ever existed), and indeed, of any form of
central Jewish political authority, control of the Jewish calendar is likely to
have become an issue: who, from this point onwards, would have taken it over
and determined the dates of Jewish new moons and festivals? Historians
commonly believe that control of the calendar passed into the hands of an
especially designated rabbinic court.^133 This traditional view, which usually
assumes that rabbis had actually controlled the calendar well before 70CE,is
based entirely on rabbinic sources that describe a single rabbinic court located
at one time in Jerusalem, and after 70CEin other places, determining the new
moon—in their words,‘sanctifying the month’—on the basis of witnesses’
reports of new moon sightings, and deciding whether to intercalate the year of
the Jewish calendar.^134
calendrical court:pRH2: 6 (58b), assuming thatkahana(‘priest’) is not in fact the rabbi R.
Kahana (i.e. a personal name).
(^132) On the elusive identity of the Sanhedrin before 70CE, see Schürer (1973–87) ii. 199–226,
Goodblatt (1994) 77–130, Goodman (1987) 112–16, (2007) 327, 378. On its disappearance after
70 CE, see ibid. and Stern (2003b) 197 and n. 12.
(^133) e.g. Safrai (1965), Goodblatt (1994) 207, Goodman (2000) 108. The last-named writes, in
elation to the calendar:‘when [after 70CE] the Temple Sanhedrin could no longer give them [the
Jews] certainty they accepted the authority of the self-appointed rabbinic Sanhedrin [i.e. court]
with relief. This was the only religious function performed by the rabbis that was genuinely
needed by the rest of the Jewish nation.’This notion that the calendar was somehow unique and
a religious function that only rabbis could perform after 70CEis a common misconception,
refuted by the existence of local Jewish calendars in Diaspora communities. 134
The determination of the new moon and the decision whether to intercalate the year are
presented in rabbinic sources as two distinct procedures, possibly carried out by two distinct
rabbinic bodies; but for the purpose of our argument this distinction is not important here. The
procedure and laws of the intercalation are mainly found intSanh.2 (note that according to 2: 6,
the intercalation of the year was carried out already in Temple times, by Rabban Gamaliel, on the
Temple mount). The procedure of‘sanctification of the month’(a phrase which, in some
contexts, is better translated‘sanctification of the new moon’) is mainly found inmRH, where
it is clearly presented as under the monopoly of a single rabbinic court. This court is said to have
been originally located in a large courtyard in Jerusalem called Beit Ya’azeq (2: 5); witnesses from
all over Judaea travelled to it, sometimes even on the Sabbath, to report their new moon sightings
(1: 6, 1: 9, 2: 5; alsotRH2: 1). The court’s decision on the new moon date was supreme: any
dissenting rabbi was forced to comply, as in one case when R. Yehoshua eventually submitted to
Rabban Gamaliel II’s authority (2: 9). This passage implies that the rabbinic court remained in
charge after 70CE, since Rabban Gamaliel was active in the early 2nd c.; in his period, however,
the calendar court was located no longer in Jerusalem but in Yavneh (mRH2: 8, and seetRH4: 5;
alsomRH1: 3–4 assumes a rabbinic court in charge of the calendar before and after the
destruction of the Temple). Other sources suggest the persistence of this system even later,
with the rabbinic court in charge of sanctifying the new month or intercalating the year (or both)
located in various places in Galilee and Judaea including Usha (tRH2: 1,pRH2: 1 (57d)), Ein Tav
(pRH2: 5 (58a),bRH25a, etc.: see S. Safrai 1965: 35–7), and Lod (pSanh.1: 2 (18c),bH:ullin56b),
with named rabbinic personalities from the 2nd–4th cc. serving on the appointed panel (tSanh.
342 Calendars in Antiquity