Footnote 2 – Strata: Milestones: Shemaryahu Talmon (1920–2010)

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).