There are about twenty different texts from Qumran which deal with a 364-day solar calendar. They are mainly very fragmentary, so the calendar is not completely understood. However, it is significantly different from the Babylonian lunar calendar which evolved into the 354-day Hebrew calendar as known today. The scrolls calendar divided the year into four quarters and recorded the feast days of the community. Feasts were fixed to the solar year and so occurred on different days from those indicated in the Babylonian-based calendar. Many of the texts are rosters of weekly shifts or courses of temple service for the twenty-four priestly families, known as Mishmarot.
Structure
The year is made up of twelve months, grouped in quarters. Each quarter contains three months; two of 30 days and one of 31 days, i.e. 91 days or 13 weeks, each quarter. The following table shows a quarter of the year. The year and each of its quarters starts on the same day, the fourth day of the week. This was the daywhen the sun was created in Genesis 1:14–18. However, the calendar as we know it is 364 days long, making it one and a quarter days short of a true year. This means, if it were put into practice, it would quickly lose synchronisation with astronomical events. Because of this, Lawrence Schiffman has stated the view that "this calendar was never really put to the test except perhaps for a short period". Uwe Glessmer has proposed on the basis of 4Q319 that the calendar was in fact intercalated, a week being added every seven years to keep it synchronised with the solar year. Roger Beckwith suggested that the discrepancy between the calendar and the true year, though noticed, may not have been of concern to the community that used the calendar.
''Mishmarot''
The Mishmarot are texts which outline the weekly courses of the twenty-four priestly families who perform duties in the temple. The order of families follows that found in 1 Chronicles 24:7–18. Repeating the twenty-four over a period of six years completes a full cycle and the following year once again starts with the first of the priestly families. Here are a few entries in 4Q325 : As the years are traversed, Sabbaths and feast days are usually noted. For example : The texts are quite fragmentary, but because so much of the material is formulaic, restoration is relatively easy. One of these texts, the extremely fragmentary Mishmarot C, also contains a number of historical allusions, mentioning the names "Yohanan" and Shelamzion. Illusive snippets of text read "Shelamzion entered..." and "Hyrcanus rebelled...". Another fragment twice mentions "Amelios killed..." Aemilius Scaurus.
Other texts
Among the calendrical works is 4Q317, which lists the phases of the moonwith respect to the 364-day calendar, 4Q318, which contains a section which used thunder at various times to predict the future, and 4Q319, which analyzes certain events over a period of 294 years, i.e. six Jubilees.
