Rabbinic courts, however, were most likely also involved in the determina-
tion of the lunar or‘Jewish’calendar—as is consistently assumed in rabbinic
sources, other than the passage above quoted—and if so would have been
competing against the authority of the city councils. The outcome is bound to
have been plurality, and sometimes diversity, of calendars. Diversity could also
have arisen because of disagreements between rabbis or rabbinic courts, for in
spite of the general rabbinic assumption that there was only one calendrical
court, and hence a single Jewish calendar,^149 there is some evidence in rabbinic
sources of plurality and disagreement between competing rabbinic authorities.
In one story, new moon witnesses presented themselves first to Rabbi
Yoh:anan b. Nuri (who rejected them), and then went to Yavneh to Rabban
Gamaliel (who accepted them); this suggests two competing rabbinic
courts.^150 Individual rabbis are often presented as intercalating the year on
their own initiative, in some cases possibly in defiance of the patriarchal
court.^151 Moreover, in one passage R. Simon is said to have instructed‘those
Evidence of celebration of specifically Roman festivals in Palestine—which would imply the use
of the Roman Julian calendar—is limited entirely to rabbinic sources whose meaning is dubious
(‘Kalendae’and‘Saturnalia’inmAvodah Zarah1: 3). As Belayche rightly argues (2001: 261–2),
the celebration of‘Saturnalia’at Scythopolis, seemingly referred to inpAvodah Zarah1: 3 (39c),
is historically unlikely, as this city is not known to have been particularly Romanized; inasmuch
as the Talmud is known to use generic terms for pagan practices,‘Saturnalia’in this passage
could well be a generic term for a local, non-Roman pagan festival, which could still have been
dated according to a lunar calendar.
(^149) See above, n. 134. The assumption that only one rabbinic court was entitled to determine
the new month and the intercalation explains the rabbinic practices of disseminating the court’s
decisions through beacons or messengers to Palestine and the Diaspora (see below) and of
observing a second festival day in the Diaspora so as to prevent the inadvertent desecration of the
date observed in Palestine. These practices—to the extent that they were ever actually observed—
were unique to rabbinic Judaism. See Stern (2001) 242–7.
(^150) mRH2: 8. There is no indication that R. Yoh:anan b. Nuri ever submitted to his decision,
unlike R. Yehoshua in the story that follows (ibid. 2: 8–9). According to Kurtstag (1975),
R. Yoh:anan b. Nuri only gave the witnesses a preliminary hearing, without attempting to
reach a calendrical decision himself; but this interpretation is unwarranted, and serves only to
support the traditional view of a single rabbinic authority.Whether this story actually happened
does not matter much: the assumption behind it, that rabbis could differ on the calendar, is itself
significant.
(^151) Hezser (1997) 377–80, following Jacobs (1995) 200–2. It is frequently claimed that the
(Jewish) Patriarch presided over the calendrical court and even controlled it (e.g. S. Safrai 1965,
Levine 1996: 10, Goodblatt 1994: 204–7, 1998: 182–5). However, the evidence is inconclusive and
sometimes unsound, and regularly contradicted by accounts of rabbinic decision-making with-
out patriarchal involvement; Jacobs (1995) 195–205 concludes that if there ever was patriarchal
control of the calendar, it was only under Rabbi Judah I (early 3rd c.CE; see also Safrai 1965: 38,
though he resists this conclusion). A good example of rabbinic defiance to the patriarchal court
might be R. Simon/Simai (late 3rd c.), who is cited inpSanh.1: 2 (18c) as disagreeing with the
patriarchal decision (this decision is at least associated in this passage with the‘house of Rabbi’,i.
e. the patriarch) to relocate the procedure of intercalation from Lod to Galilee, and who in
bH:ullin56a is depicted as going to Lod, ostensibly of his own initiative, to intercalate the year.
Safrai (1965) 31–3 argues that the story inbH:ullinmust have occurredbeforethe patriarchal
decision to relocate to Galilee, and that R. Simon must have been sent to Lod as a patriarchal
Dissidence and Subversion 347