observe instead a lunar calendar, and thus‘forget the feasts of the covenant
and walk according to the feasts of the nations after their error and their
ignorance; for there will be those who will assuredly make observations of the
moon—how it disturbs the seasons and comes in from year to year ten days
too soon’ (6: 35–6).^46 This polemic against the lunar calendar makes no
reference, however, to any sectarian schism within the Jewish people, or to
any select group of Jews or‘remnant of Israel’that may have been observing
the true calendar. Instead, Jubilees draws on the traditional, biblical contrast
between the covenant of Israel and the error of the‘nations’, and presents the
adoption of the alien, lunar calendar as a sin that Israel collectively commits.
The book of Jubilees certainly reveals that the calendar was the object of
polemical disputes among second-centuryBCEJudaean Jews, but provides no
indication that these disputes were or could be the cause of sectarianism, social
division, or schism within the Jewish people.
Moving on to thefirst centuryCE, there is nothing about the calendar in
either Philo’s or Josephus’lengthy descriptions of the Essenes and other Jewish
sectarian groups.^47 This omission is highly significant, particularly in the case
of Josephus, who was keenly interested in sectarian difference withinfirst-
century Judaism, and who would certainly have mentioned sectarian calendars
if he had known of their existence. Not only does this cast further doubt
on Talmon’s theory—especially if the Qumran community is identified as
Essene^48 —but it also suggests that the calendar was not a sectarian issue in
first-centuryCEJudaism.
Evidence of calendar sectarianism in Second Temple Judaism may possibly
be drawn from brief mentions in early rabbinic literature of an obscure group
(or sect?) calledBaytusim, sometimes rendered in English as‘Boethusians’,
who believed that the reaping of theomer(first barley sheaf ) should always be
on a Sunday (and consequently also the festival ofWeeks, or Pentecost, exactly
seven weeks later); whereas according to the rabbis, theomerwas always on
the second day of the festival of Unleavened Bread, regardless of its weekday.
Rabbinic sources suggest that because of this disagreement, the reaping of the
(^46) In this last verse, the principal objection to the lunar calendar is the disruption caused by a
year that is ten days too short. Elsewhere, in Jub. 49: 7–8, 14, the prohibitions on adjourning
Passover‘from day to day’and‘from month to month’may be interpreted as objections to the
lunar calendar on different grounds, e.g. that it leads to the celebration of Passover on varying
weekdays (as opposed to the 364-day calendar, where the festival occurs always onWednesday)
and to the occasional postponement of the festival by one month whenever, in the Jewish lunar
calendar, there is an intercalation. On all these passages see Glessmer (1997).
(^47) For classical sources (including Philo and Josephus) on the Essenes, see Vermes and
Goodman (1989). Josephus’descriptions of Essenes and other groups are chieflyinJewish
War2. 8. 2–14 (119–66),Antiquities13. 5. 9 (171–3), 10. 6 (297–8), and 18. 1. 2 (11–22).
(^48) This identification is commonly assumed, but actually very contentious. Talmon (1958) =
1989) 184–5 acknowledges the silence of Philo and Josephus on the calendars, but does little to
explain it away.
376 Calendars in Antiquity