The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls: The ... - josephprestonkirk

SHEMARYAHU TALMON 31
a different ephemeris is bound to forfeit his membership in the community.
The deviation from accepted norms is viewed as civic rebellion
bound to lead to a parting-of-the-ways, and ultimately to the establishment
of a socioreligious corpus separatum.
The following episodes, which occurred in diverse historical periods,
illustrate the adverse impact on the Israelite society of the rejection of the
previously shared calendar by a constituent member-group:
The earliest example of the divisive effect of calendar divergence in
the history of biblical Israel is the cult and calendar reform initiated by
Jeroboam I ben Nebat, the rebellious founder of the northern kingdom
(1 Kgs 12:25–33). The author of the Book of Kings reports that
Jeroboam “instituted the (pilgrimage) Feast (of Booths) in the eighth
month, on the fifteenth day of the month, like the feast in Judah (which
was observed there on the fifteenth of the seventh month)…and sacrificed
upon the altar which he had made at Bethel on the fifteenth day of the
eighth month, in a month of his own choosing” (12:32–33), viz., on a date
that he is said to have fixed willfully. The different timing of the pilgrimfestival
reveals Jeroboam’s intention to bolster his other actions pertaining
to the cult so as to dissolve the political union of Judah and the
northern tribes, which David and Solomon had achieved: the reestablishment
of the ancient holy places at Bethel and Dan as rival shrines of
the Temple of Jerusalem (12:27–30); 17 the installation of the calf-cult at
these sites (12:28–32); and the investiture of priests of his own choice
from the “elite of the people,” miqs[ôt ha(am (12:31–32; 13:33; contrast 2
Chr 13:8–9). Jeroboam’s calendar reform effected not only a different
timing of the Feast of Tabernacles at that specific occasion, but rather
brought about the deferment by one month of all cultic festivals in the
northern kingdom from that time on (ca. 900 B.C.E.) until after the days
of King Hezekiah of Judah (727–698; 2 Chr 30:1–27). A realignment of
the Ephraimite calendar with the Judean one only came into effect when
King Josiah (639–609; see 2 Chronicles 34–35) forcefully imposed the
Judean schedule of holy seasons on the Israelites who had remained
in the northern territories after the destruction of Samaria (34:6–7, 33;
35:17–19). 18
17. The tale of Jacob’s night-vision at a “certain place,” which he named Bethel (Gen
28:10–22; 35:1–8), like the report of the Danites’ migration in the period of Israel’s conquest
of Canaan and the tribe’s settlement in the northern part of the land (Judges 17–18)
where they set up an “idol” at Dan and installed a priesthood of the “sons of Moses”
(18:30–31), in which Bethel is referred to by the designation har Ephraim (17:1–13;
18:2, 13), reflect elements of the hieros logos of the twin-sanctuaries Dan and Bethel.
18. See Shemaryahu Talmon, “Divergences in Calendar-Reckoning in Ephraim and
Judah,” VT 8 (1958): 48–74; reprinted in a collection of Talmon’s work as: “The Cult