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

HENRY W. MORISADA RIETZ 209
God saw that (it was) good. And there was evening and there was morning,
the fourth day (Gen 1:14–19; cf. Jub 2:9).
Evidence that the year began on Wednesday is provided by the date formulae
of the Angelic Liturgy, which date the Sabbaths to specific days of
the month, with the first Sabbath on the fourth day of the first month:
Nw#y)rh #dwxl h(br)b hnw#y)rh t[b#h tlw( ry# lyk#ml
“[To the Master. Song of the whole-offering of] the first [Sabba]th on the
fourth (day) of the first month.” 19 Nevertheless, there is a discrepancy
between the 364-day calendar and the 365.25 days it takes for the earth
to orbit the sun. Although several proposals have been advanced as to
how the 364-day calendar would be reconciled with the 365.25-day earth
orbit, none has been persuasively substantiated by the sources. 20 R. T.
Beckwith, however, questions whether the 364-day was ever intercalated.
Modern proposals for intercalation are based on the assumption that the
followers of the 364-day calendar would have recognized the need for
intercalation. In actuality, Beckwith argues, the traditions in First Enoch
and Jubilees are quite emphatic that the year constitutes exactly 364 days:
…and the days (of the year) add up to exactly three hundred sixty-four
days (1 En. 72:32); 21
They bring about all the years punctiliously, so that they forever neither gain
nor fall behind their fixed positions for a single day, but they convert the year
with punctilious justice into three hundred sixty-four days (1 En. 74:12).
Moreover, Jubilees is emphatic that the length of the year is ordained by
God’s commandment:
All the days of the commandments will be 52 weeks of days; (they will make)
the entire year complete. So it has been engraved and ordained on the heavenly
tablets. One is not allowed to transgress a single year, year by year. Now
you command the Israelites to keep the years in this number—364 days. Then
the year will be complete and it will not disturb its time from its days or from
its festivals because everything will happen in harmony with their testimony.
They will neither omit a day nor disturb a festival (Jub. 6:30–32). 22
19. 4Q400 (Angelic Liturgy or Sabbath Song) 1, line 1. The restoration of the formula
is certain; see the formula preserved at the beginning of Angelic Liturgy 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, and
12 (see Newsom, “Angelic Liturgy” [PTSDSSP 4B]).
20. Roger T. Beckwith provides a convenient discussion of several of the major proposals
to solve the problem of intercalation (Calendar, Chronology, Jewish and Christian:
Biblical, Intertestamental and Patristic Studies [AGJU 33; Leiden: Brill, 1996], 125–33).
21. Quotations of 1 Enoch are from the translation by Ephraim Isaac, in OTP 1:5–89.
22. Translation of the Ethiopic version of Jubilees is from James C. VanderKam, The Book of
Jubilees (CSCO 510–11; Scriptores Aethiopici 87–88; Leuven: Peeters, 1989). Unfortunately,
this passage has not been identified among the fragmentary manuscripts from Qumran.