calendars, Jewish

Abstract One of the characteristics of the classical world was its calendrical diversity and calendrical development. Dates with the Aramaic month names are found in some late biblical books, dating from the Persian period. The Judean world during the late Second Temple period (c. late 3rd-early 2nd century bce to the 1st century ce) had one of the largest corpora of different kinds of calendars. Calendrical material in the Ethiopic Book of Jubilees reflects some Hebrew calendrical documents from the Dead Sea Scrolls (2nd century bce to the 1st century ce) which describe different kinds of schematic 364-day year calendars, composed of fifty-two weeks and sabbaths. Some of these Qumran documents include the repeated six-year cycles of the priestly courses. Aramaic calendars found in caves in Qumran include schematic Babylonian-style zodiacal and astrological calendars that involve the sun, moon and the zodiac (c. late 3rd-early 2nd century bce to the early 1st century ce). These calendars, which have a connection with the later Ethiopic Book of Enoch (1 Enoch), are lunisolar. Legal documents hidden in caves in the Judean desert during the Second Revolt against Rome under Hadrian contain calendar dates with the Aramaic month names. The development of the rabbinical lunisolar calendar in late antique “Mishnaic” Hebrew took place gradually, possibly from the 1st century ce until the mediaeval period. The rabbinical calendar’s Babylonian origins, such as its Aramaic month names, have survived.