andrewcriddle

I'm agnostic about whether or not the DSS are related to the Essenes. I made that clear at the beginning of this thread.

However I do regard the DSS as coming from a sectarian community and I think the strongest evidence is the calendar.

I have given my reasons why I do not think it likely that the Temple of Jerusalem continued to use a 364 day year until after the Roman occupation.

eg that the moon appears to be mentioned as providing a sign for feast days in Ben Sira, and that a period of Roman influence is not a plausible time to introduce a lunar calendar.

I have also tried to show that such a calendar appears to have been in use before 100 BCE among Jews beyond the area of Seleucid control.

You IIUC regard the lunar calendar for festivals in the 2nd century BCE as something only acceptable to hard-core supporters of the process of hellenization under the Seleucids. (Despite evidence from Jubilees and CD at least suggesting that the use of a 354 day calendar was more widespread than that.)

I entirely agree that this is a perfectly possible position I just don't think it particularly probable. However I'm not sure what further evidence either of us can bring to convince the other.

Andrew Criddle

spin

Why are there traces of the 364-day calendar in the Hebrew bible? One example given was on the basis of no prophecies in Ezekiel ever given on a sabbath while almost every prophecy is given with a date in the year. Another is the fact that the flood of Noah lasted according to the final redaction of Genesis one year and ten days, ie 354 days + 10 = 364 days, just as found in Jubilees.

You have avoided the evidence from Enoch's Astronomical Book which shows that it is reacting to a 360-day calendar as being four days too short. There is no discussion of an active 354-day calendar.

In 167 BCE the Jews were taken to "partake of the sacrifices" on "the monthly celebration of the king's birthday", 2 Macc 6:7. The Greeks used a lunar calendar and in the east the Seleucids used the Babylonian version. The monthly celebration enforced the Babylonian calendar of 354-days, which lies behind the little horn (Antiochus IV)'s attempt t o change the sacred seasons in Dan 7:25.

These are the facts that I have already put forward regarding the calendar. These along with the fact that the priestly rosters found at Qumran were strictly 364-day calendars should make obvious the fact that that calendar was the priestly choice.

What you have provided is vague indications of the moon in Ben Sira and Eusebius and your assumptions about Jubilees. There is no interaction with the material I have put forward.

There was no indication of likelihood about your presentation.

I don't understand this in a cultic situation, especially when the Pharisees had struggled for generations with a temple that did not accept their calendar and, once given the opportunity with the demise of Sadducee power, what was there to stop their institutionalisation of the Babylonian calendar?

Also, what evidence do you have 1) that the Romans used their solar calendar in the east and, if you found such evidence, 2) that they enforced in on the people of the east?

Ie Egypt, where the lunar calendar was in use by the Ptolemies. If we can trust these fragments as a fair representation of writings that come from the era purported, what do they show about the situation in Judea?

The festivals were tied to the Jerusalem temple. Except for the period under the wicked priest Menelaus and to some extent under Alcimus, when was the temple not in the hands of the old temple priesthood? CD merely refers us to Jubilees which in turn says that people are following the phases of the moon, which no-one seems to be doubting.

Why don't you interact with the evidence that I have provided?

Why would sectarians have their own brand of temple rosters?

Why would you consider CD sectarian when 1) its community seems to reflect Israel, and 2) it is strongly temple-centred?


spin

andrewcriddle

Ezekiel may indicate the use of a 364 day year at the time of its composition. I'm more dubious about the flood. The flood starts on the 17th day of the 2nd month and ends on the 27th day of the 2nd month of the next year. If anything this seems to suggest that the author used a 354 day year lunar calendar but regarded the solar year as 364 days long.

Concentrating on Ezekiel; unless one is adopting a very late date for Ezekiel it provides no information about when within the Hellenistic period a lunar calendar was adopted. On an early date it would be quite compatible with the use of a lunar calendar from before the time of Ezra.

It has been argued that the use of Babylonian lunar months as equivalent to Hebrew months eg in the date of the festival of Purim in Esther indicates that a lunar calendar is being used for festivals but I'm doubtful about how strong an argument this is.
The Astronomical Book of Enoch may indicate that at the time of composition, probably c 250 BCE a lunar 354 day month was not an issue.

However

a/ This is perfectly compatible with the general adoption of such a calendar in the early 2nd century BCE.

b/ Things are possibly complicated by the differences between the Ethiopic Book of Enoch and the DSS version. IIUC Milik claims that 4Q 208 is part of Enoch and that it includes a three year synchronization between a 354 day lunar year and 364 day solar year similar to that found in other calendars among the DSS.
It may be that the lunar calendar for festivals was first introduced during the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes although I have doubts as to the interpretation of Daniel 7:25 'and shall think to change the times and the law'. It may refer back to Daniel 2:21 where speaking of God it says 'he changes times and seasons' where the meaning seems to be that God is in charge of the fate of kings and nations. If so Daniel 7:25 would mean that Antiochus seeks to take God's place as the master of fate.

The question is not exactly when the lunar calendar was first introduced but whether it was accepted voluntarily only by renegades like Menelaus or by a much wider group. Passing references like that in Ben Sira are IMO more useful for answering such a question than the polemic and propaganda of Jubilees.

The DSS group are clearly in some sense deeply concerned about the temple. Whether their calendar describes an actual state of affairs or an ideal is much less clear.

(Some DSS such as the Temple Scroll appear clearly to be describing an ideal not current reality.)

I'm dubious about the claim that the period after Roman occupation was one of Pharisaic supremacy. If you're basing this on Josephus Antiquities XIII 'for whenever they [the sadducees] asuume some office though they submit unwillingly and perforce, yet submit they do to the formulas of the Pharisees since otherwise the masses would not tolerate them' then there are major problems with treating this as objective history.
I can't give primary sources but according to Stern, Calendar and Community pps 34-35 'Already in the late first century BCE the cities of Asia Minor, Northern Syria and the Phoenician coastline converted their Macedonian [lunar] calendars into solar calendars.' (she gives references but to other secondary sources)

There was IIUC no direct compulsion at least until a later period but it was presumably 'encouraged' by the new world power.
IIUC the Ptolemies had abandoned the lunar calendar by 200 BCE (apart from a possible revival during 163-145 BCE).

The fragments don't provide direct evidence of the situation in Judea but do IMO indicate that a lunar calendar could be used for Jewish festivals in the 2nd century BCE without pressure by Antiochus and probably against the background of a local solar calendar.

Andrew Criddle

spin

It indicates scribal intervention to correct the length of the year but unwillingness to do away with the perceived true length of the flood. It's not serendipity that the flood lasted a year and ten days in the final version.

I have no problem with a late date for Ezekiel. However, it does show the fact that the 364-day calendar was in use when it was written. Not ionly that, but it shows preference of days for visions.

So am I. I don't know when Esther was written and what value can be placed on Babylonian months appearing in the romance.

The Astronomical Book is well aware of the movements of the heavenly bodies, the movements of the moon through the month being the concern of lengthy analysis, which 4Q208 &4Q209 reflect. It gives similar descriptions of the movement of the sun through the year.

So you don't think there's any substance to him changing the seasons, despite the factthat he did attempt to force the use of the lunar calendar in Jerusalem.

Where was ben Sira written? I have read an analysis that it was written in Egypt by someone who withdrew to Egypt with the change of possession of Judea.

I haven't used Jubilees to argue anything. It was introduced by you.

We have signs that Antiochus introduced calendrical dictates. When the temple was rededicated and the priests returned to Jerusalem, those dictates would obviously have gone out the window as the priests were not in Jerusalem to suffer them.

If you look at the evidence we have temple rosters, a list of temple valuables, we have visions of the temple, we have liturgies, a defence of temple purity, a community led by priests, even a discussion of the red heifer.

It is based firstly on the notion that they managed to get hegemony under the reign of Alexandra Salome and they were strong enough to hold it during the period with the tacit backing of the queen against the Sadducees. When the Sadducees were decimated in the temple siege, that left the Pharisees practically unopposed, as a social force with a religious agenda operating within the confines of the law.

Then don't you find it interesting that Josephus gives only lunar month names, both Babylonian and Greek?

Yet I think the Roman approach early on was to use the lingua franca for administration and its cultural trappings.

You seem to be correct.

But one must ask what Egypt has got to do with the temple. What, especially when Jerusalem first went into the hands of the Seleucids and then into the hands of the Hasmoneans.


spin

andrewcriddle

Antiochus appears (putting together information from 1 Maccabees chapter 1 and 2 Maccabees chapter 6) to have required pagan sacrifices to be made upon the 25th of each month, which appears to have been the royal birthday according to the Seleucid lunar calendar.

This seems to require that a lunar calendar is in use for religious festivals at this time.

However, there is no explicit indication in Maccabees that the calendar as such is at issue, what is explicitly objected to is offering pagan sacrifices in honour of Antiochus not the dates upon which sacrifices are made.

The account in Maccabees is compatible either with the use of a lunar calendar for some time before Antiochus or with it being introduced during his reign but not being in itself a major issue for most Torah observant Jews.
The author refers to himself in 50:27 as 'Jesus the son of Sirach of Jerusalem', the work was weritten originally in Hebrew and was translated into Greek c 50 years later by the author's grandson who found a copy in Egypt after he moved there. Copies of the original Hebrew have been found at Qumran and Masada one scroll being early 1st century BCE.

IMO the work was probably written in Jerusalem and is almost certainly evidence for Judean rather than Egyptian Jewish teaching.

FWIW the passage about the moon and festivals in 43:6-8 is found in the early 1st century BCE Hebrew scroll from Masada
Josephus's usage is very puzzling and there is no general agreement about it.

When using Greek month names Josephus is using the (originally lunar) Macedonian calendar. By the time Josephus was writing the Macedonian calendar (outside of Macedonia itself) had mostly been modified to a solar calendar.

When he actually means a Macedonian month eg in Jewish War book 4 where the death of Vitellius is said to occur on the 3rd of Apellaios, Josephus seems to be using the solar Macedonian calendar of Tyre. Tyre is IIUC generally supposed to have adopted a solar form of the Macedonian calendar some years before the mass adoption of solar calendars in Asia Minor c 9 BCE.

However when Josephus uses a Macedonian month as an equivalent of a Jewish/Babylonian month he is treating the Macedonian calendar as if it was still lunar at the time of writing.

It has been suggested that he is using a standard convention of equivalences between Babylonian and Macedonian months dating back to the 1st century BCE or before, despite the fact that it is no longer valid. I don't find this very plausible but I don't have a better explanation.

Andrew Criddle