Head of All Years: Astronomy and Calendars at Qumran in Their Ancient Context

Head of All Years: Astronomy and Calendars at Qumran in Their Ancient Context By Jonathan Ben-Dov

Publisher: Brill Academic Publishers 2008 | 331 Pages | ISBN: 900417088X | PDF | 2 MB

Rather than being an isolated, primitive body of knowledge the Jewish calendar tradition of 364 days constituted an integral part of the astronomical science of the ancient world. This tradition-attested in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the Pseudepigrapha-stands out as a coherent, novel synthesis, representing the Jewish authors' apocalyptic worldview. The calendar is studied here both 'from within' - analyzing its textual manifestations - and 'from without' - via a comparison with ancient Mesopotamian astronomy. This analysis reveals that the calendrical realm constituted a significant case of inter-cultural borrowing, pertinent to similar such cases in ancient literature. Special attention is given to the "Book of Astronomy" (1 Enoch 72-82) and a variety of calendrical and liturgical texts from Qumran.



About the Author

Jonathan Ben-Dov, Ph.D (2005), Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is a Lecturer in Biblical Studies and Second Temple Literature at the University of Haifa. He has co-authored the edition of calendrical texts in the series Discoveries in the Judaean Desert (Oxford University Press, 2001), and published a series of articles in the field.

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