which we shall return below, and which refers in that context to the lunar
calendar; but the Hosea Pesher, on a plain reading, is simply condemning the
observance of pagan, non-Jewish festivals.
More clearly related to the calendar and the way it is reckoned is a passage
in the Community Rule prohibiting the advancement or postponement of any
of the‘appointed times’or festivals (1QS 1: 13–15).^29 But this only means that
the calendar must beaccuratelyreckoned. Any Jew within the community of
lunar calendar users could have made a statement of this kind.^30 It does not
imply a polemic against any competing or fundamentally different calendar.
The text most frequently cited as ‘evidence’ of calendar polemics and
sectarianism at Qumran is HabakkukPesher(11: 2–8), which refers to the
Wicked Priest’s persecution of the Teacher of Righteousness and then goes on:
And at the time of the festival of rest of the Day of Atonement, he [theWicked
Priest] appeared to them to consume them and cause them to stumble, on the day
of fast, their Sabbath of rest (6–8).^31From the earliest days of Qumran scholarship, this passage has been taken to
mean thatWicked Priest and Teacher of Righteousness observed the Day of
Atonement on different dates, that this difference was due to the Teacher’s use
of the sectarian, 364-day calendar, and that theWicked Priest deliberately
exploited this difference by desecrating his opponent’s day (Talmon
1951, 1958 = 1989: 152–3). This interpretation has rarely been seriously
challenged;^32 and yet, it is obvious that many other interpretations are equally
possible:
(a) TheWicked Priest is not accused, in this passage, of using a different
calendar or of observing the Day of Atonement on the wrong date. At most, he
is accused ofdesecratingthe day of rest: for although his‘appearance’before
the Teacher and his followers would not have been, in itself, a forbidden act,^33
thePesherclearly implies that his choice of the Day of Atonement to‘con-
sume’the Teacher and his followers and‘cause them to stumble’—whatever
this exactly means—constituted a form of desecration. This is the meaning of
the possessive‘their’at the end of the passage:‘their Sabbath of rest’implies
(^29) Talmon (1958 = 1989) 151 and VanderKam (1998) 45–6 read this as further evidence of
calendar polemics. 30
As e.g. most probablybBerakhot28a, and Targum Jonathan at Zeph. 3: 18, on those who
‘delayed the times of the festivals 31 ’.
Alternative translations may be:‘And at theendof the festival of rest of the Day of
Atonement...on the day of fast, the Sabbath oftheirrest’(or again:‘...ontheirday of fast,
the Sabbath of rest’): see Nitsan (1986) 190–1; Vermes (1997) 484.
(^32) It is followed entirely by Nitsan (1986) 135–6, 190–1, and VanderKam (1998) 44–5.
(^33) It might have been considered a forbidden act if the Priest had travelled on that day
e.g. from Jerusalem to the Qumran village, insofar as CD 10: 20 prohibits journeys on the
Sabbath of more than a thousand cubits; yet there is no indication, in this passage, that such a
journey was made.
370 Calendars in Antiquity