Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered - The Preterist Archive

actually give this special sign a name. In that example, the text says, 'The sign of the conclusion of the
fifth jubilee falls during (the priestly course of) Jeshebeab.' The meaning is that Jeshebeab is the
course Calendrical Texts and Priestly Courser 129
1 and 4 in the cycle, only two priestly courses give their names to otot years: Shecaniah and Gamul.
Further, the cycle begins with Shecaniah. This oddity results because at the Creation there had been
no prior intercalation. Accordingly the reference is to the course in service when intercalation was
first necessary in Year 3.
The purpose of the present text is to record all such concordant years until the cycle begins to repeat,
and to align that cycle with both the seven-year cycle of sabbatical years and the 'jubilees' that
measured longer periods of time. An otot cycle of 294 years emerges (6 x 49). The text also counts all
the otot years and takes special notice when such a year coincides with a sabbatical year. It names
each special year by the relevant priestly course and also names each jubilee (in a more complicated
way, however, as explained below). But in constructing this alignment of the sexennial priestly
rotation with the jubilees, the text encounters a basic difficulty: 49 is not precisely divisible by 6. The
otot years will therefore not always fall at the beginning and end of jubilee periods. As a consequence
the text uses 'jubilee' in two slightly different senses. The term refers first to that period (only
approximating to 49 years) that aligns with the cycle of otot. We can call this the 'jubilee of the otot'.
At other times the term denotes the actual period of 49 years. At the end of 294 years the differences
are made good as Table 2 illustrates:
The text relates the 'jubilee of the otot' to the actual 49-year jubilee in two ways. The first is through
its reference to the 'sign of the conclusion of the jubilee'. Only once, in 2:18-19, does the author
actually give this special sign a name. In that example, the text says, 'The sign of the conclusion of the
fifth jubilee falls during (the priestly course of) Jeshebeab.' The meaning is that Jeshebeab is the
course serving in the temple at the end of the fifth actual jubilee - that is, as year 196 (4 x 49) comes
to an end. If the author had wished, he could have given the names of all the 'signs of the conclusion
of the jubilee' (they are respectively Jedaiah, Mijamin, Shecaniah, Jeshebeab, Happizzez and Gamul).
The second way of relating the 'jubilee of the otot' to the actual 49-year jubilee involves the names the
author gives to the jubilees. These names are always either Gamul or Shecaniah. The writer