CALENDAR WARS BETWEEN THE 364 AND THE 365-DAY YEAR
Many scholars have accepted Jaubert's hypothesis that the reckoning of a 364-day year goes back to the biblical period. According to James VanderKam, the lunisolar calendation attested in the literature of the Second Temple was first established during the Antiochan persecution. It seems to me,...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
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| Published: |
Peeters
2001
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| In: |
Revue de Qumran
Year: 2001, Volume: 20, Issue: 2, Pages: 207-222 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Parallel Edition: | Non-electronic
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| Summary: | Many scholars have accepted Jaubert's hypothesis that the reckoning of a 364-day year goes back to the biblical period. According to James VanderKam, the lunisolar calendation attested in the literature of the Second Temple was first established during the Antiochan persecution. It seems to me, however, that both the 364-day year and the 365-day year came into being at about the same time, the time of what may be called "calendar wars." Evidence of these debates comes from two sources. The book of Jubilees not only describes the 364-day reckoning, but attacks "the people who carefully observe the moon with lunar observations" (Jubilees 6), showing that it was already standard. Indeed, the Aramaic fragments of the Book of Enoch attest that by 200 BCE there already existed a longstanding day-by-day synchronistic calendar of 364-days. Jubilees tells us that the 364-day year had been recorded in the heavenly tablets, going back to Moses. Rabbinic sources also know of calendar wars that existed between the Minim and the Samaritans on the one hand and the authorities of Jerusalem on the other. This quarrel focuses on the period of the reestablishment of the Temple in Jerusalem, beginning in 520-16 BCE. As told in Ezra, this aroused the ire of the Samaritans and others who brought charges against the Jews to the Persian authorities. What may have provoked the calendar conflict is the importation of a rough lunisolar 19-year cycle from Mesopotamia. Problematically, it put pagan names in place of the traditional counting of the month by ordinal numbers. In fact, the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls almost always employ the ordinal names of the months "the First Month, the Second Month..." rather than the lunisolar names "Nisan, Iyar..." The first attested usage of lunisolar reckoning is in an Elephantine papyrus that dates a land contract on 18 Elul 471 BCE. Therefore, the establishment of the lunisolar calendar in Jerusalem with its pagan antecedents had to predate this usage, perhaps sometime around 500 BCE. In short, both calendars—the lunisolar calendar that consisted of 365-days that became standard in Jerusalem and the synchronistic calendar attested in Enoch of a 364-day year—came into being at the same time. |
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| ISSN: | 2506-7567 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Revue de Qumran
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