the representation of some cosmological (or eschatological?) ideal where solar
years, lunar months, priestly weeks, and liturgical days combined in perfect
harmony. Many scholars have noted the ideological implications that the
Qumran calendar may have been invested with. It has thus been described
as a‘sacred time-scheme fromUrzeittoEndzeit’,^22 or an expression of‘the
theological and ideological conviction that the courses of the luminaries and
the cycles of festivals and priestly duties operate in a cosmic harmony imposed
upon them by the creator God himself’;^23 some have even suggested that the
measure of time, with the use of synchronistic calendars, was treated at
Qumran as a religious act (Wise 1994: 231). These interpretations, it should
be emphasized, are speculative because the sources do not provide much more
than the calendars themselves. But if the Qumran calendar was invested with
symbolic, ideological meaning, it becomes more conceivable to regard it as a
theoretical model or an ideal, rather than as a calendar intended in real life for
practical use.
It is important to reiterate, however, that the only calendar employed in
Qumran sources for dating the festivals is the 364-day year; this makes it
difficult to dismiss this calendar as purely theoretical, and to assume that in
practice another calendar was used instead.^24 We are unable to conclude,
therefore, whether or to what extent the 364-day calendar was used in practice
by the Qumran community, and thus whether the festival dates of the com-
munity differed substantially from those of other Jews who used a lunar
calendar. This affects, in turn, our ability to establish whether the 364-day
calendar marked out, insocialterms, the Qumran community from the rest of
Jewish society, and thus whether it could have led potentially to a sectarian
split.
(^22) Wacholder andWacholder (1995) 37, Talmon in Talmon, Ben-Dov, and Glessmer (2001) 9.
The notion that the calendar represented a continuum beginning fromUrzeitis based on a
reference to the Creation at the beginning of theOtottext (4Q319 iv 11, ibid. 201, 214–15) and
possibly of 4Q320 fr. 1 i, l. 3, which would imply that thefirst cycle of the calendar began on the
Wednesday of Genesis, when the sun and moon were created (Talmon op. cit. 40–3; see also
VanderKam 1998: 79). The notion ofEndzeitis possibly based an eschatological interpretation
of the priestly courses (see above).
(^23) VanderKam (1998) 112. This interpretation assumes that Qumran calendars were intended
to represent the courses of the sun and the moon, and thus were symbolizations of cosmic
harmony; but as argued above, the Qumran calendars were primarily conceived and expressed as
abstract schemes. The idea that the 364-day calendar is God-given appears explicitly in Jub. 6:
23 – 38, but not clearly in any Qumran source (Stern 2010b: 242–3).
(^24) I retreat from my conclusion in Stern (2000b) that in practice the Qumran community
must have used the mainstream Jewish lunar calendar; there is certainly no hint of this in any of
the Qumran sources. Similarly, there is no good reason to surmise that the 364-day calendar was
reserved for cultic purposes and the mainstream lunar calendar for‘civil’purposes (cf. Jaubert
1957 a: 35 n., 156–7), even though one would expect the lunar calendar to have been used in
commercial dealings with people outside the‘Qumran community’.
368 Calendars in Antiquity