Qumran Calendars and the Creation: A Study of 4Q317 (4QCrypticA Lunisolar Calendar)

This paper re-examines 4QcryptA Lunisolar Calendar (4Q317), a scroll from Qumran in an esoteric Hebrew script with many emendations that aligns the moon’s daily waxing and waning to a 364-day calendar. It seeks to ascertain whether the calendar may be exegetically related to the Creation and also discusses the text’s arithmetical relationships with the cycles of the priestly courses from Qumran, possible intertextual allusions to other lunar calendars in the Dead Sea Scrolls (4QDaily Prayers [4Q503], 4QAstronomical Enocha-bar [4Q208–4Q209]), biblical passages, and parallels with another Mesopotamian calendar text. The first transcription of the largest fragments using a Cryptic A font is here published with a commentary (in the Appendix), focusing on the text’s unusual scribal features. A reconsideration of the calendar’s structure with a new arrangement of its dates is presented. [Please note there is a Hebrew transcription error in the Appendix, p.87 at 4Q317 frags 1+1a, line 9: the penultimate letter is cryptic waw, not a tav]