A Dead Sea Scroll scholar at the University of Manchester in England has identified an early precursor to the traditional Jewish lunar calendar. In a 2,000-year-old fragmentary scroll known to scholars as 4Q318, recent Manchester Ph.D. Helen Jacobus discovered an early Jewish zodiac calendar that uses the same month names still used by some Jews today. According to Jacobus, the calendar can still be used to find the moon’s position in the zodiac on a given date in the Jewish calendar. The end of the scroll also preserves a “thunder omen”-predictions about what will happen if thunder is heard when the moon is in a particular sign of the zodiac.
A Dead Sea Scroll scholar at the University of Manchester in England has identified an early precursor to the traditional Jewish lunar calendar.
The recently published results of Jacobus’s research earned the 2011 Sean W. Dever Memorial prize, announced in the July/August 2011 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.*
*See Strata, “Study of Qumran Zodiac Earns Dever Memorial Prize,” BAR, July/August 2011.
Read more about the Qumran zodiac.
Permalink: http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/news/early-jewish-calendar-identified-among-dead-sea-scrolls/
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What good is archaeology when we as christian don;t use it to correct mistakes made by Constantine and use it for what makes good common sense . The Passover was on Wendsnesday and not on friday as the dead sea calendar found supports.
I have found an online site that gives much of the calendar date data … and from that have attempted to put together both the solar 364 day year and the lunar year
the solar calendar date data gives enough information for about 12 years … while the lunar calendar date data gives enough information for about 6 years…
based on this information … i have found it posible to align the lunar date data of the dead sea scrolls … with the lunar date data of the elephantine papyrus … and have found that both of these calendars can be aligned perfectly