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

34 WHAT’S INACALENDAR?
observance of the “holy seasons.” Therefore, one who does not observe
the festivals in accord with the schedule to which adheres the community
in the midst of which he lives per force becomes an outsider with the status
of a mere metoikos.
a. Tannaim
In an anecdote variously ascribed to Tannaim of the first, second or third
generation, the observance of a solar calendar is held up as a criterion
that separated Jews from non-Jews:
Once a pagan asked R. Johanan ben Zakkai (end of first century C.E.):
“we have kalenda, saturnalia and kartosis; and you have Pesah (Passover),
(Aseret (a rabbinic designation of S0ā bu (ō t—Feast of Weeks or Pentecost) and
Sukkot (Feast of Booths). When you rejoice we do not rejoice; and when we
rejoice you do not rejoice. And when do we both together rejoice?” Said R.
Johanan ben Zakkai to him (mockingly): “On a day on which rains fall.”
b. Second Temple
“The Book of Heavenly Luminaries” (1 Enoch chs. 72–82) and the Book
of Jubilees (especially chapters 6 and 2) prove that in the Second Temple
period the adherence to a solar rather than to a lunar cultic calendar also
was a bone of contention between rival sectors in the Jewish community.
The apocryphal works extol the immutability of the sun, which does not
decrease or increase, in contrast to the instability of the moon, which is
subject to a monthly process of waxing and waning (1 En. chs. 73–74).
The author of Jubilees cannot deny the moon its part in the divinely established
alternation of light and darkness, of day and night (Gen 1:14–19).
However, whereas in the biblical tradition both “great luminaries” were
created to “serve as signs for festivals and for seasons and years” (Gen
1:14), in Jubilees only the sun is assigned a role in the revolution of the
divinely established seasons:
And on the fourth day he (God) made the sun and the moon and the stars.
And he set them in the firmament of heaven so that they might give light
upon the whole earth…And God set the sun as a great sign upon the earth
for days, Sabbaths, months, feast (days), years, sabbaths of years, jubilees
and for all the (appointed) epochs of years.