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

36 WHAT’S INACALENDAR?
a profane day with the holy day…and will not make a year (exactly) three
hundred and sixty-four days. (Jub. 6:36–38) 23
The juxtaposition of a passage from Jubilees and excerpts from a Qumran
fragment of Pseudo-Moses (4Q390 frag. 1, lines 8–10) 24 shows the latter
to echo the concerns of the former: 25
4Q390 frag. 1 lines 8–10 Jub. 1:12–14
they will forget ordinance and
appointed times, sabbaths of
the covenant.
And they will violate everything They will abrogate everything
and they will do and will begin to do
what I consider evil. what I consider evil…
Consequently, I will hide my face Then I will hide my face
from them. I will hand them over from them. I will deliver them
to the hand(s) of their enemies, into the hands of the nations
and deliver [them] to the sword for captivity, for booty
and for being devoured…
They will forget all my law,
all my commandments and all my
verdicts. They will err
regarding the beginning of the
month, the sabbath, the
festival, the jubilee and the
decree.
Since 1 Enoch and Jubilees could not be unequivocally related to a definable
socioreligious entity, scholars tended to view their authors’ statements
concerning calendar and calendar controversy as pertaining to a
theoretical-scientific dispute. It was only after the discovery at Qumran of
remains of a considerable number of calendrical compositions and calendar-related
statements that the momentous religious and civic importance
of the solar-versus-lunar calendar controversy at the height of the Second
23. Shemaryahu Talmon, “Anti-Lunar Calendar Polemics in Covenanters’
Writings,” in Das Ende der Tage und die Gegenwart des Heils. Begegnungen mit dem Neuen
Testament und seiner Umwelt, Festschrift für H.-W. Kuhn zum 65. Geburtstag (ed. M. Becker
and W. Fenske; AGJU 44; Leiden: Brill, 1999), 29–40.
24. Devorah Dimant, “New Light from Qumran on the Jewish Pseudepigrapha:
4Q390,” in The Madrid Qumran Congress; Proceedings of the International Congress on the Dead
Sea Scrolls, Madrid 18–21 March 1991 (ed. J.C. Trebolle Barrera and L. Vegas Montaner;
2 vols.; STDJ 11; Madrid: Editorial Complutense;Leiden: Brill, 1992), 405–48.
25. Jubilees exhibits a chiastic order of components relative to 4Q390.