rabbinic polemics against heterodoxy, termedderek aFeret.But these prac-
tices are too few to indicate any kind of real knowledge of the Qumran sect
or its practices or of other sectarian groups.
One interesting area is that of calendar disputes. Alongside the calen-
dar of lunar months and solar years used by the Pharisaic-rabbinic tradi-
tion, other groups, including the Dead Sea sectarians and the authors of
1 EnochandJubilees,called for use of a calendar of solar months and solar
years. Although numerous problems still beset study of the calendrical sit-
uation in Second Temple Judaism, some part of it was clearly known to the
rabbis. Rabbinic sources report that certain sectarians, Sadducees, and
Boethusians practiced such a calendar, insisting that Shavuot fall on a
Sunday and, hence, that the start of the counting of the omer commence
on a Saturday night. If indeed these rabbinic notices refer to the calendar
controversy known from the Scrolls and pseudepigraphal literature, then it
seems that the rabbis’ knowledge was quite fragmentary or that they chose
to pass on only a small part of the picture. From rabbinic sources alone
one would never have gathered that this sectarian calendar was based on
solar months and that it represented an entirely alternative system. All we
would have known is that they disagreed on the date of Shavuot.Rabbinic Engagement with Second Temple Issues
From what we have said so far, one would assume that there simply is very
little relationship between the literature of Second Temple Judaism and the
rabbinic corpus. Yet when we examine the Judaism of the Dead Sea Scrolls
sect and of the literature they preserved, we find both similarity to and in-
teraction with views preserved in rabbinic texts. Further, fundamental
ideas preserved in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha found their way
into the rabbinic tradition. And still to be fully explained, rabbinic litera-
ture preserves a variety of reflections on historical data preserved by
Josephus, either in his words or those of his sources. In what follows, we
will concentrate on examples illustrated by materials preserved in the
Qumran corpus, including some that stem from books otherwise pre-
served in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha.423
Early Judaism and Rabbinic JudaismEERDMANS -- Early Judaism (Collins and Harlow) final text
Tuesday, October 09, 2012 12:04:19 PM