Abstract
The origin of the 364-day calendar attested in Dead Sea scrolls and in the books of Jubilees and Enoch is disputed. While it is often considered as a sectarian invention during the 3rd or 2nd centuries bce, Jaubert, VanderKam and Gardner claim that it is already used in the Torah and may be as old as Pg. Using the number seven and the notion that the actual Flood period marks the interruption of time and calendar, this article shows that the 364-day calendar is used by the Priestly writer both in Genesis 1 and in the Flood Narrative, thus suggesting that one of the aims of the Priestly writing was to establish a new calendar to mark the end of the Babylonian rule.
Highlights
A jubilee ago, Annie Jaubert claimed that the calendar of the book of Jubilees is to be regarded as an ancient priestly calendar which the Essenes continued to use[1]
This Jubilees calendar is called ‘sabbatical calendar’[2] because it is based on a 364-day year made up of exactly 52 weeks, with four seasons of equal length (91 days: 1 En 72,8-32; 82,4-6.11-20)[3]
Rather than a mere ‘hobby horse of Jubilees sectarians’[13], the 364-day calendar is clearly reflected in both the final Torah redaction of the Flood Narrative (FN) and already in the Priestly writer’s version. This calendar may be as old as the Priestly Narrative (Pg) which opens with a cosmogony (Genesis 1) that supplies the basic components of the calendar attested in the book of Jubilees
Summary
A jubilee ago, Annie Jaubert claimed that the calendar of the book of Jubilees is to be regarded as an ancient priestly calendar which the Essenes continued to use[1]. Rather than a mere ‘hobby horse of Jubilees sectarians’[13], the 364-day calendar is clearly reflected in both the final Torah redaction of the FN and already in the Priestly writer’s version. This calendar may be as old as the Priestly Narrative (Pg) which opens with a cosmogony (Genesis 1) that supplies the basic components of the calendar attested in the book of Jubilees
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