Jonathan Ben-Dov
opposition to the protorabbinic luni-solar calendar.^48 In analogy to the cal
endar polemics in rabbinic literature, Talmon construed the moon to be an
evil sign, symbolizing the dark in opposition to the bright light of the sun.
However, the publication of further calendrical sources revealed that
this notion is only partially justified. We now know that the 364DCT had a
constant interest in lunar phenomena, starting from its inception in AB and
lasting until the latest calendrical texts from Qumran.^49 AB is determined to
present models applicable not only to the sun but also to the entire heavenly
host: sun, moon, and stars. This ideology is conveyed in 1 En 74:17: "Then the
year is correctly completed in accord with their eternal positions and the po
sitions of the sun; they rise from the gate from which it rises and sets for
thirty days." This verse purportedly seeks to show that sun and moon equally
traverse the same gates assigned to the sun in chap. 72, and that they do so
according to the same time frame, thus yielding a correct (literally sdq,
"just") order of the universe (cf. 74:12). The interest of AB in lunar phases is
therefore not a secondary development, but is rather a primary concern of
the author.
Later calendrical texts, which employed the 364DY in the framework
of a religious community, with fixed times for ritual acts and prayers, con
tinued to assign a central place to lunar calculations. This is most clearly
seen in mishmarot documents such as 4Q320 and 4Q321, where lunar phases
are counted side by side with the order of service in the temple and the festi
val calendars for the cultic year. This commitment to the tracking of lunar
phases originates in the Mesopotamian prototypes of the 364DCT, and has
been sustained by the Jewish tradents of the Mesopotamian knowledge, al
beit with the changes required to fit their calendrical-apocalyptic needs.^50
A great part of the 364DCT is transmitted in religious compositions
that have no interest in astronomy. Thus, when the Damascus Document or
the pesherim argue against the mistaken calendar practices of their oppo
nents, or when T appoints the sacred times for sacrifice, they use the 364DY
as an arithmetically efficient device for the regulation of the cult. This device
- Talmon, The World of Qumran, 167-71; recently Talmon, "Anti-Lunar Calendar
Polemics in Covenanters' Writings," in Das Ende der Tage und die Gegenwart des Heils. Fest
schrift H. W. Kuhn, ed. M. Becker and W. Fenske (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 29-40. - J. Ben-Dov, "The Initial Stages of Lunar Theory at Qumran,"//S 54 (2003): 125-38.
- J. Ben-Dov and W. Horowitz, "The Babylonian Lunar Three in Calendrical Scrolls
from Qumran," ZA 95 (2005): 104-20. In contrast to what is sometimes suggested, I do not
think a lunar calendar was practiced at Qumran. On the contrary, the normative time frame
was always the 364DY, but it was consistently aligned with schematic models of the lunar orbit.