Milestones: Shemaryahu Talmon (1920–2010)

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Shemaryahu Talmon, J.L. Magnes Professor of Bible at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and one of the world’s foremost scholars on the Dead Sea Scrolls, passed away in December at age 90.

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Footnotes

See Hershel Shanks, ReViews, “Discoveries in the Judaean Desert Vol. XXI, Qumran Cave 4—XVI: Calendrical Texts,” BAR 28:06.

This view has recently been questioned by Sacha Stern of University College London, who doubts that “the 364-day calendar was ever used in practice, or intended for such use, at Qumran or in any other community,” although “Qumran sources are clearly committed to it” and the scrolls use it to date the festivals. Was this solar calendar part of the Qumran community’s sectarian identity? This interpretation is based, Stern argues, on “over-interpretations and sometimes even, quite frankly, misinterpretations.” Sacha Stern, “Qumran Calendars and Sectarianism,” in Timothy H. Lim and John J. Collins, eds., The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2010).