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Pentecontad calendar

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The pentecontad calendar (from Koinē Greek: πεντηκοστή, romanized: pentēkostē, lit. 'fiftieth') is an agricultural calendar system thought to be of Amorite origin in which the year is broken down into seven periods of fifty days (a total of 350 days), with an annual supplement of fifteen or sixteen days. Identified and reconstructed by Julius and Hildegaard Lewy in the 1940s, the calendar's use dates back to at least the 3rd millennium BCE in western Mesopotamia and surrounding areas. Used well into the modern age, forms of it have been found in Nestorianism and among the Fellahin of modern Palestine.[1]

Overview

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In Akkadian, the pentecontad calendar was known as hamšâtum[2] and the period of fifteen days at the end of the year was known to Babylonians as shappatum.[3]

Each fifty-day period was made up of seven weeks of seven days and seven Sabbaths, with an extra fiftieth day, known as the atzeret.[4]

Used extensively by the various Canaanite tribes of Palestine, the calendar was also thought to have been used by the Israelites until the official adoption of a new type of solar calendar system by Solomon.[5]

Philo expressly connected the "unequalled virtues" of the pentecontad calendar with the Pythagorean theorem, further describing the number fifty as the "perfect expression of the right-angled triangle, the supreme principle of production in the world, and the 'holiest' of numbers".[6]

Tawfiq Canaan (1882–1964) described the use of such a calendar among Palestinians in southern Palestine, as did his contemporary Gustaf Dalman, who wrote of the practices of Muslim agriculturalists who used Christian designations for the fiftieth day, "which in turn overlaid far more ancient agricultural practices: grape-watching, grape-pressing, sowing, etc."[7]

Julian Morgenstern argued that the calendar of the Book of Jubilees has ancient origins as a somewhat modified survival of the pentecontad calendar.[8][9]

At Qumran

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Several different calendars are reflected in the Qumran calendrical texts, some of which were used by the Essenes at Qumran. Their year was marked by festivals such as the Feast of New Wine, the Feast of Oil, and the Feast of New Wheat.[10] But rather than a pentecontad calendar, with its fifty-day period, the Qumran texts mostly refer to a 364-day calendar tradition that divides the year into four quarters of three months each.[11] Nevertheless, the pentecontad calendar is reflected in some Qumran texts such as the Temple Scroll (11Q19 13-29).

In the Temple Scroll's pentecontad calendar, the year was divided into seven fifty-day periods, each marked by an agricultural festival. The offering of firstfruits of the harvest at the Temple was connected with this.[12]

Several other texts at Qumran have been found to contain pentecontad calendars. Among them are 11Q20 1–6, 4Q325, and 4Q365.

Later research

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The calendrical exposition by Lewy was widely adopted initially by many scholars. Yet it was challenged in the more recent research. Ben-Dov (2012) cast some doubt on the early attestations of such a pentecontad calendar.[13]

Prominent Assyriologists like Benno Landsberger were quite skeptical, and even Julius Lewy, himself, did not support it later on.[14][15]

While some biblical passages, such as Deut 16:9 and Lev 23:15–16 do give support to a pentecontad calendar by referring to a count of seven weeks during harvest time, these biblical sources do not reflect a full-fledged pentecontad calendar more generally.[16]

It is quite clear that the seven-based thinking is rather common in the priestly sources of the Pentateuch. So, according to Ben-Dov, pentecontad calendars were "the fruit of a later history of development", which emerged from such priestly and other sources. Thus, their real development occurred during the late Hellenistic or early Roman period.

Further development of pentecontad calendars occurred primarily in some Jewish circles associated with the apocalyptic traditions, as well as in the Philonic Pythagorean-minded circles. Later on, these traditions also became popular in some Christian and Jewish communities.[17]

The pentecontad festivals are still celebrated currently by the Ethiopian Jewish community Beta Israel.[18][19]

"The Sabbaths are divided into cycles of seven. A special prayer, is recited at sunset and reflects the particular characteristics of each Sabbath. The seventh Sabbath--Legata Sanbat--is the holiest of all, and there are extra prayers, festivities and a special sanctification service."[20]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Roger Thomas Beckwith (2005). Calendar, Chronology and Worship: Studies in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity. BRILL. p. 26. ISBN 90-04-12526-4.
  2. ^ Hebrew Union College (1924). Hebrew Union College Annual. p. 75.
  3. ^ Lance Latham (1998). Standard C Date/Time Library: Programming the World's Calendars and Clocks. Focal Press. p. 37. ISBN 0-87930-496-0.
  4. ^ Eviatar Zerubavel (1989). The Seven Day Circle: The History and Meaning of the Week. University of Chicago Press. p. 8. ISBN 0-226-98165-7.
  5. ^ Morgenstern, Julian (1966). The Rites of Birth, Marriage, Death, and Kindred Occasions Among the Semites. Hebrew Union College Press. p. 282.
  6. ^ André Dupont-Sommer (1956). The Jewish Sect of Qumran and the Essenes: New Studies on the Dead Sea Scrolls. Macmillan. p. 1.
  7. ^ Joan E. Taylor (2003). Jewish Women Philosophers of First Century Alexandria. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-925961-5.
  8. ^ Millar Burrows (1955). The Dead Sea Scrolls. Viking Press. p. 241.
  9. ^ Jonathan Ben-Dov, The_History_of_Pentecontad_Time_Periods (I), in: A Teacher for All Generations. Essays in Honor of James C. VanderKam, (Gen. ed. E. Mason; JSJSup 153; Leiden: Brill, 2011), vol. I, pp. 93–111. This paper rebuts most of previous theories presented above.
  10. ^ Geza Vermes (1995). The Dead Sea Scrolls in English. Continuum International Publishing Group. p. 54. ISBN 1-85075-563-9.
  11. ^ Helen R. Jacobus 2020, Function and Creativity in the Hebrew, Aramaic and Cryptic Calendars from Qumran. In Dead Sea Scrolls, Revise and Repeat: New Methods and Perspectives. SBL Press. 2020-09-28. doi:10.2307/j.ctv17ppd08.13. ISBN 978-0-88414-436-6. Retrieved 2025-04-24. p.3
  12. ^ Semite Pentecontad Calendar.
  13. ^ Jonathan Ben-Dov 2012, The History of Pentecontad Time Periods (I). Brill. academia.edu
  14. ^ B. Lansberger, “Jahreszeiten im Sumerisch-Akkadischen—Concluded,” JNES 8 (1949): 273–97, p.291
  15. ^ Jonathan Ben-Dov 2012, The History of Pentecontad Time Periods (I). Brill. academia.edu
  16. ^ Jonathan Ben-Dov 2012, The History of Pentecontad Time Periods (I). Brill. academia.edu. p.94
  17. ^ Jonathan Ben-Dov 2012, The History of Pentecontad Time Periods (I). Brill. academia.edu. p.95
  18. ^ Y. Ziv, Halachot Shabbat of Beta Israel according to Te’ezaza Sanbat (Ph.D. diss., Bar-Ilan University, 2009), 16
  19. ^ Semite Pentecontad Calendar.
  20. ^ RELIGIOUS PRACTICES OF ETHIOPIAN JEWS. NACOEJ CURRICULUM. The North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry - nacoej.org

Further reading

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  • Stephen Pfann 2009, A Reassessment of Qumran’s Calendars. Henoch. Volume: 31, Issue: 1, Pages: 104-110.
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