the community in which he lives, ceases to be a member of the social body to
which he hitherto belonged.^39The appeal to social theory, more specifically to Durkheim, well serves Tal-
mon’s argument, since (to simplify somewhat) Durkheim assumed collective
cohesion or‘solidarity’to be essential to society and breach of this cohesion to
be anomalous and problematic. But in our post-modern age of global but
plural, often fractured multiculturalism, this simplified view of Durkheim’s
notion of solidarity has become rather outdated: in today’sWestern world, we
tend to assume that societies can thrive on internal, irreconcilable differ-
ences.^40 Although a common calendar expresses, no doubt, the rhythm of
collective activities, there is no good reason to assume that a society is unable
to function or exist without it, and hence that calendar difference necessarily
leads to social breakup and schism.
Let us adopt a more empirical approach, and assess whether there is any
evidence in the sources themselves to support Talmon’s contention that the
calendar was associated, directly or indirectly, with Qumran’s sectarian
schism. Most of the sources that Talmon cites as‘evidence’are the polemical
passages that have been dealt with above and effectively dismissed. Another
passage that he cites, apparently more relevant to his argument, is in the
Damascus Document (CD 4: 10–12), where Israel’s separation from the House
of Judah and from Belial (i.e. the community’s separation from mainstream
Jewish society) is associated with‘the completion of the period according to
the number of those years’—which Talmon interprets as a reference to
Qumran’s distinctive calendar.^41 It seems evident, however, that this line of
text is only providing a chronological marker—i.e. when the separation took
place—and bears no relationship to the calendar of 364 days.
More relevant to the relationship between the calendar and Qumran sectar-
ianism is the intriguing fact that the calendricalOtottext appears in the same
manuscript as one of the versions of the Community Rule, 4QSe= 4Q259. It is
widely accepted that in this version,Ototconstitutes an integral part of the
Rule, where it appears instead of the Maskil’s hymn in the other versions.^42
(^39) Talmon (1958) = (1989) 148–9, adding further that deviation from the calendar of the
mainstream community may have been, for the Covenanters, a sign of civic and political
dissidence. See also ibid. 193 40 – 4. The citation is from Durkheim (1915) 11.
For a postmodern reevaluation of Durkheim’s notion of solidarity, see e.g. Maffesoli (1996).
(^41) Talmon (1958) = (1989) 151, and Talmon, Ben-Dov, and Glessmer (2001) 6.
(^42) Metso (1997) 48–51, 140–7 and Alexander and Vermes (1998) 129, 150–2 (see also
Glessmer 1996b: 125–32), both suggesting also that (a) inasmuch as the Community Rule was
mainly a handbook for the Maskil (i.e. leader of the community), information about the calendar
would have been important to include, and (b) the Maskil’s hymn that appears instead in the
other versions opens with calendrical material—at least with a cursory reference to the times of
the day, new moons, festivals, and four days of remembrance when various prayers are to be
recited (1QS 10: 1–5: Alexander and Vermes 1998: 120–4)—and thus occupies a similar
functional slot within the Rule.
Sectarianism andHeresy 373