Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered - The Preterist Archive

analysis and attempts what in his terms is clearly a resolution. For instance, he attempts to set forth a
proper chronology of the flood story, coming up with a 364-day calendar of the Jubilees type.
Contradictory elements are either harmonized, passed over or deleted in the interests of rationalizing a
coherent calendar and explaining its intrinsic applicability to the flood story. In the process it sorts out
inconsistent elements in what modern scholars refer to as the Yahwist or Elohist (Priestly) parts of the
narrative.
Since the main concern of the first two columns about Noah and the flood is calendrical, the
traditional story is subordinated to this interest. The calendar is an extremely important matter, and it
has been said that whoever controls the calendar, its feast days and rituals, controls the society.
Rabbinic literature, building on the Pharisee tradition that preceded it, was originally dependent on a
lunar calendar that was only later harmonized, following Roman developments, with a solar year. It
should, however, be noted that a 'pre-Rabbinic' form of the lunisolar calendar already existed in our
period, as several of the 'Priestly Courses' texts in Chapter 4 below demonstrate.
In theory, this calendar depended on human observation for new moons and the like. Qumran abjured
this, attempting a solar harmonization of an intellectual kind and obviously wishing to develop very
early on a harmonious total mathematical scheme that did not depend on human failings. In the
process, feast days were located at the beginning of weeks, and everything regularized to accord with
a full 364-day, one-year scheme including intercalated days.
For instance, the full year, 364-day cycle is completed at the bottom of Column 1 and the beginning of
Column 2 with the notice that the earth was completely dry on the seventeenth day of the first month,
not the twenty-seventh as in Biblical tradition. The tradition that the flood lasted only one year is
known in Jubilees (5:31), but its author seems to have tried to have it both ways and adopt an
intermediate position between the text before us and the Biblical tradition of more than one year. For
him, though the land was dry on the seventeenth day of the second month, it was not until the twentyseventh
day - the end of the flood in the Biblical text we are familiar with that Noah sent the animals
out of the ark. Noah himself did not really leave the ark until the first day of the third month, two
weeks later (6:1).
Our text disagrees, noting in Lines 2 - 3 of Column 2 that 'on Sunday, on that very day, Noah went
forth from the ark'; and as if to further punctuate this point, it adds, 'thereby completing a full year of
364 days'. It returns to this point, showing it to be a major concern, in the next line (4- 5), repeating:
'Noah {went forth} from the ark at the appointed time - one full year.' Because the polemic is so
emphatic, it would appear that the author of the text is familiar with the traditional text, which is
probably the Pharisaic one. That this is the point he wants to hammer home, i.e. that the flood came to
an end on the same Sunday the 17th one full year after it began, could not be clearer. The rest of the
narrative is subordinated to this. Colourful detail, like the size of the ark, the kinds of animals and the
raven are discarded.
Because of the author's abstract, mathematical flair and because his calendar is mathematically
speaking so harmonized, days of the week do not fluctuate over the month, whatever the year, and he
proceeds to give the exact calendrical day of the week for all significant events in the story. In fact, he
adds extra days, some perhaps coinciding with significant festival days as in 1.8 or 1.22. For a precise