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The sectarians
believed that God had conveyed to them secrets about the structure
of the cosmos, among them the true calendar and the precise dates
for the celebration of the festivals. Details of the Qumranic calendar
are found in a number of scrolls, such as "Some Observances of
the Law" and "Mishmarot."
The sectarians had a solar calendar, with a 364-day year. It was
divided into twelwe equal months of thirty days, and at the end
of each quarter - i.e. in the third, sixth, ninth, and twelfth months
- an extra day was added, giving these months thirty-one days. This
calendar was the product of an earlier Jewish tradition, reflected,
for example, in the apocryphal Book of Enoch. The solar calendar
was not used by the bulk of the Jewish people at that time, and
consequently, the Qumran sectarians did not observe the festivals
on the same days as the rest of the Jewish population. In the Qumranic
system, the festivals always fell on the same day of the week: Passover
fell on Wednesday; Shavu'ot (Feast of Weeks) on Sunday; and Yom
Kippur (Day of Atonement) on Friday. The scrolls also contain evidence
of a lunar calendar of 354 days, with months alternating between
twenty-nine and thirty days. It seems that the members of the Qumran
community used both calendars simultaneously and developed ways
of coordinating them.
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