This traditional view only reflects, however, the biased perspective of
rabbinic sources. It is actually most unlikely that a function that had always
been reserved to political rulers—in ancient Israel, in post-Seleucid Judaea,
and indeed, throughout the ancient world—should have been handed over
after 70CEto a body that was only of marginal political significance.^135 The
only local political authorities in Palestine to have survived the debacle of 70CE
were the city councils, and it is they who should be expected to have taken over
control of the Jewish calendar. In this respect they would only have been
emulating the‘pagan’or‘Greek’cities of the Palestinian coastline, such as
Gaza, Ascalon, and Caesarea, which had taken control of their own calendars
after becoming independent from Seleucid rule;^136 the predominantly Jewish
cities of inland Palestine (such as Lod, Tiberias, Sepphoris) could have done
exactly the same after the fall of Jerusalem in 70CE. In the pages that follow
I shall argue that even if the rabbis laid claim to the Jewish calendar—as seems
evident from rabbinic sources—city councils had a stronger claim, because the
calendar was primarily a political function, and they are therefore more likely
to have taken effective control of it.
Evidence that the Jewish calendar was determined and controlled by city
councils after 70CEis difficult tofind. Rabbinic sources are reticent, but not
surprisingly, as this is a social reality that they would have sought to mask:
instead, they consistently promote the idea that the Jewish calendar was
controlled entirely by rabbis. Nevertheless, some passages in the Palestinian
Talmud imply that the reality differed somewhat from the rabbinic ideal. The
story is thus told of one Shazkar, head of the city of Gadara (south-east of the
Sea of Galilee), intercepting the new moon witnesses on their way to Rabban
Gamaliel’s court; the latter responded by having him removed from his
headship.^137 Whether‘head’(rosh), presumably equivalent to the Greekar-
chon, means leader of the city council or perhaps only of the Jewish commu-
nity of Gadara, this story suggests a conflict between rabbis and civic or
communal authorities over control of the new moon declaration—even if we
are told here that the rabbi prevailed.^138
2: 1,pRH2: 6 (58b),pSanh.1: 2 (18c),pRH3: 1 (58d),pAvodah Zarah3: 1 (42c)), and with the
late-3rd-c. survival in eastern Galilee of a local beacon system to disseminate the court’s
decisions (pRH2: 1 (58a)). See further Safrai loc. cit. and Stern (2001) 157–65.
(^135) On the politically marginal status of rabbis in Palestine (at least until the 3rd c.CE, and
possibly even later), see Goodman (2000) 93–111, Hezser (1997) esp. 353–404, S. Schwartz
(2001), and Satlow (2005) 153–8;paceGoodblatt (1994).
(^136) On the calendars of Gaza, Ascalon, Caesarea, and further north Tyre and Sidon, which by
70 CEwere all Julianized, see Ch. 5.
(^137) pRH1: 6 (57b), offering a different version of the story told inmRH1: 6, where the person
who intercepted the witnesses was Rabbi Aqiva. For a parallel seebRH22a, where the name
Shazkar (so in MS Leiden ofpRH) varies considerably in the manuscripts.
(^138) On the ethnic (or religious) composition of Palestinian city councils, and whether pagan
city councils could have had any involvement in the Jewish calendar—a question that is
Dissidence and Subversion 343