Regardless of which of these versions camefirst,^43 the appearance of a calendar
text in one of the most important sectarian writings from Qumran must surely
be significant—even if insufficient to prove that calendar and sectarianism
were inherently linked (as argued above, not everything in a‘sectarian’text is
ipso factosectarian, let alone the basis of a sectarian split).
A similar, though less convincing, argument may be applied to the
polemical (and perhaps also‘sectarian’) letter known asMiqtzat Maase
ha-Torah (MMT). In one of its copies, 4Q394, thefirst surviving lines
refer to the year’s being complete in 36[4?] days (Talmon, Ben-Dov, and
Glessmer 2001: 157). But in this case, it is questionable whether these lines,
which look like the tail piece of a calendrical roster, belonged to the same
literary composition asMMT(as argued above in the case ofOtotand the
Community Rule) or rather just happened to have been included in the
same manuscript.^44
Evidence that use of a different calendar was related to, or constitutive of,
Qumran sectarianism is thus, at best, extremely meagre. It is primarily a
modern, scholarly assumption whichfinds little support in the textual sources.
This conclusion should come as no surprise. Calendar diversity was a fact of
life in ancient society, among the Jews (Stern 2001) as well as in Greece and
post-Seleucid Asia and the Near East (see Chapters 1 and 5). In Roman
Judaea/Palestine, in particular, a very wide range of local civic calendars
were available including the various 365-day calendars of Tyre, Caesarea,
Ascalon, Gaza, and (later) Provincia Arabia, and the Jewish and Samaritan
lunar calendars—all calendars reckoned very differently, although using most-
ly the same Macedonian or Babylonian month-names—as well as the Alexan-
drian and the Julian calendars. Documentary and epigraphic evidence suggests
not only that these various calendars were ubiquitous and in wide use in
Roman Judaea/Palestine, but also that individuals often had the choice, espe-
cially in smaller towns and localities which did not have a clearly defined local
calendar, to pick whichever one most suited them.^45
(^43) This remains contentious and speculative, Metso (1997: 140–7) treating 4QSeas the earliest
version extant, and Alexander (1996, esp. 444–5) treating it as later.
(^44) Strugnell in Qimron and Strugnell (1994) 203, VanderKam (1998) 116. Strugnell is actually
referring to a much longer calendrical text known since as 4Q394 1–2 (previously 4Q327), which
Qimron and he (1994: 7–9, 44–5, 109–10 took to be part of 4Q394 (MMT) and published
together with it. However, this reconstruction has now been discredited: 4Q394 1–2 is not only a
separate literary work (as sensed already by Strugnell himself, ibid. 203) but indeed a completely
separate manuscript (VanderKam 1998: 75–6, and Talmon, Ben-Dov, and Glessmer 2001:
160 – 1, with re-edition of the text ibid.). Nevertheless, Strugnell’s discussion applies equally
well to thefirst lines of 4Q394 (proper), in which only a reference to the 364-day year appears
to have survived.
(^45) This clearly emerges from the work of Meimaris (1992). The calendar of Gaza, for example,
is attested in 6th-c. southern Palestine outside the territory of the city (ibid. 119–21, 127 no. 115,
130 no. 127, 254 no. 352), as are the calendars of Arabia (130 no. 126, 254 no. 352) and of
Alexandria or Egypt (237 no. 287). On the potentially confusing use of various calendars in the
374 Calendars in Antiquity