The 364-day calendar is implicit throughout Qumran sources, where it is
assumed in the narrative of the Flood Story, in the Psalm Scroll, the Songs of
the Sabbath Sacrifice, probably the Temple Scroll, and perhaps the Commu-
nity Rule.^5 But the scrolls that deal explicitly with the calendar, mostly dating
from thefirst centuryBCE, lay out this 364-day scheme and its derivative cycles
in exceptional detail.^6 The number of these texts, some extant in multiple
copies (e.g. 4Q321), is sufficient to demonstrate that calendars at Qumran
were far from a peripheral concern (VanderKam 1998: 110). In this respect,
the 364-day calendar stands in stark contrast with the Jewish lunar calendar,
which was practised by many Jews in the same period but not described or
explained in any literary source before the Mishnah and Tosefta of the early
third-centuryCE. At Qumran, rather exceptionally, the calendar constituted a
literary concern, indeed a literary genre in its own right.
Qumran calendar texts do not present the 364-day year in its pure form (as
it appears in 1 Enoch ch. 72 and Jubilees ch. 6), but together with priestly
weeks and lunar days that are synchronized with the 364-day year through
the construction of longer cycles, as we shall see more in detail below.^7 The
inclusion of lunar days does not mean, however, that Qumran calendars are
‘lunisolar’or that they give equal importance to lunar and solar (or 364-day)
calendar schemes. The 364-day year is not only the sole common denominator
of Qumran calendar texts, but also their fundamental structure; it is only
within and in relation to this structure that the lunar days are represented.
Moreover, as we shall see below, the lunar calendar scheme that is implicit in
these lunar days is probably no more than an arithmetical derivation from the
364-day calendar. Even more importantly, it is only according to the 364-day
year that festivals are dated in the Qumran calendar texts. For this reason
Scrolls’were discovered; I only mean the community or group of communities that are described
in the Qumran scrolls.
(^5) Flood Story (4Q252): Lim (1992), (1993). Psalm Scroll (11QPsaDavComp 27: 2–11):
VanderKam (1998) 63–4; Ben-Dov (2008) 34–7 points out that this text also suggests the 360-
day year that appears in En. 74: 10–17, which he considers an earlier stratum of the Enoch text.
Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice (4Q400): VanderKam (1998) 65, Glessmer (1999) 255–9. Temple
Scroll (11QTa 11 – 29): Yadin (1983), J. M. Baumgarten (1987), VanderKam (1998) 65–70. The
Community Rule (1QS 10: 5 = 4Q256, 4Q258, 4Q260) seems to refer to the four seasonal‘days of
remembrance’of the calendar of Jubilees: Alexander and Vermes (1998) 120–4, VanderKam
(1998) 46–7.
(^6) The main sources are 4Q319–30, 4Q337, and 4Q394 1–2 (=4Q327), in Talmon, Ben-Dov,
and Glessmer (2001) (with tabulations on pp. 4, 17–28). See also VanderKam (1998) 74–90,
Glessmer (1999), Stern (2000b), (2001) 11–18, and especially 2010b), Gillet-Didier (2001), Ben-
Dov and Saulnier (2008).
(^7) The only exception is possibly 6Q17, with a 364-day calendar in its pure form: Talmon,
Ben-Dov, and Glessmer (2001) 7.
Sectarianism andHeresy 361