A certain change arises in later rabbinic sources, where the observance of
a deviant calendar becomes increasingly associated with heresy, social sepa-
ratism, and schism. In the Palestinian Talmud (late fourth–earlyfifth centu-
ries), the story is told of H:ananiah, nephew of (the same!) Rabbi Yehoshua,
whoflouted the authority of Palestinian rabbis by setting his own calendar, or
at least making his own intercalations, in Babylonia. Envoys were sent from
Palestine to rebuke him, with the message that if he did not comply, he could
just as well go out to the desert and establish his own sacrificial cult; the envoys
insinuated that his festivals were his and not God’s, and that his Torah was
from Babylon, not from Jerusalem. H:ananiah gave way, but some of the more
distant Diaspora communities who could not be informed in time of his
downfall ended up observing a festival on the‘wrong’date. The story is also
told in the Babylonian Talmud (sixth century): in this version, H:ananiah was
threatened, more concretely, with excommunication (nidduy), whilst his fol-
lowers in the Diaspora were warned that if they did not desist, they would have
‘no share in the God of Israel’.^55
‘Excommunication’points very clearly in the direction of social, possibly
sectarian schism; whilst the various accusations of defection from God suggest
something close to heterodoxy or heresy. These late-antique rabbinic sources
reveal a certain change of attitude towards calendar diversity, which may well
be related to (or influenced by) major changes that occurred in Christianity at
the beginning of the fourth century, as we shall presently see. It should be
stressed, however, that even these Talmudic sources are only‘stories’, indeed
only cautionary tales about a rabbi whomighthave been excommunicated
because of his separatist calendar—although in the end he was not. But there is
no evidence that the rabbinic calendar ever became, in reality, the object of
controversies or schisms: these were only to erupt much later in history,
among the rabbinic communities of the end of thefirst millenniumCE.^56 In
Antiquity the Jewish, rabbinic notion of calendar orthodoxy was subtle and its
social effects were limited. In this respect, late antique Judaism differed
markedly from contemporary Christianity, as we shall now see.
(^55) pSanh.1: 2 (19a) andpNedarim7: 13 (40a);bBerakhot63a–b. See Stern (2001) 242, 247–9.
(^56) One of thefirst major controversies over the Jewish calendar opposed Saadya and Ben-
Meir in the 920s, and divided the Rabbanite communities of Palestine and Babylonia and beyond
(ibid. 264–75). But more important, perhaps, were calendar controversies and polemics between
Qaraites and Rabbanites during the 9th–12th cc. However, the traditional scholarly view that the
calendar was one of the main polemical issues between Qaraites and Rabbanites (Poznański
1898: 261) and the main cause of the Qaraite‘schism’(Ankori 1959: 269–83, 292– 353 —citing in
support, significantly, Talmon 1958) needs to be completely revised; to some extent, my argu-
ments regarding Qumran are likely to apply there too (as suggested now by Rustow 2008: 62–5;
note how provisions for calendar disagreements were written into marriage contracts involving
Rabbanite and Qaraite spouses, ibid. 248–51).
Sectarianism andHeresy 379