alone, the 364-day year must be identified as the leading calendar in Qumran
literature.^8
In this respect, the corpus of Qumran scrolls stands in opposition to the
mainstream Judaean practice, in the same period, of using a Babylonian-type
lunar calendar. The Hasmonaean and Herodian kingdoms of Judaea (mid-
second centuryBCE–early first centuryCE), indeed, retained the standard
Babylonian calendar (or a slight modification of it), which they had inherited,
like most other post-Seleucid states, from their imperial predecessors. This
lunar calendar continued to be used by all Jews throughout the Roman period,
in Judaea as well as in the Jewish Diaspora, until the end of Antiquity and even
well beyond.^9 In this respect, the 364-day calendar of Qumran was exceptional
and may be regarded as marginal and dissident.
Qumran scholars have gone further, however, and argued that the 364-day
calendar was‘sectarian’and one of the cornerstones of Qumran’s sectarian
schism. This argument has been endorsed and reiterated many times since,
but not subjected to a sufficient level of criticism. The frequent assumption, to
begin with, that the‘Qumran community’constituted a‘sect’is open to
criticism, and has in fact been questioned in recent decades. The characteriza-
tion of the Qumran community as sectarian comes from a focus on certain
works, in particular the Community Rule and Damascus Document, that
describe communities with features that are commonly regarded as sectarian,
i.e. marginality, separatism, seclusion, rejection of the rest of society, etc. Even
if we accept, as is perhaps reasonable, that these works at least were‘sectarian’
(and so they are commonly designated in Qumran scholarship), this does not
mean that every practice or rule mentioned in these works—such as, for
example, the laws of the Sabbath in the Damascus Document, inasmuch
they differed in some ways from the Sabbath laws of other Jewish circles—
wereipso facto‘sectarian’. Difference, indeed, should not be confused with
sectarianism. The Jews in the Hasmonaean and early Roman periods frequently
disagreed on the interpretation of specific laws, as we know from several
sources such as Josephus, the New Testament, and rabbinic literature, but
(^8) This counters the common claim that solar and lunar calendars had equal status at Qumran,
e.g. J. M. Baumgarten (1987, concluding:‘In the Qumran library the entire spectrum of calendric
traditions was represented’), VanderKam (1998: 74:‘both lunar and solar arrangements...with
neither judged to be superior to the other’; also ibid. 86, 111), and Stern (2000b), (2001) 12,
which I now correct. On the calendar assumed in the‘Daily Prayers’text (4Q503), which some
have claimed is lunar, see Glessmer (1999) 252–4, Stern (2001) 13, (2010b) 239, and Ben-Dov
(2008) 132–9; there too the dominant element is likely to have been the 364-day year.
(^9) Above, Ch. 4 nn. 117–18, also Chs. 5 and 6, and in detail Stern (2001). This is evident (1)
from the persistent use of Babylonian month-names among all Jews (except Qumran) through-
out Antiquity and right down to today; (2) from dates in ancient Jewish literary, epigraphic, and
documentary sources confirming that the Jewish calendar was lunar, and (3) from the alignment
of these months (at least until the 1st c.CE) with those of the Babylonian calendar (ibid. 27–31,
55 – 62).
362 Calendars in Antiquity