Ebooks for the Classroom+Faculty

Head of All Years
ISBN: 9789047424192
Platform/Publisher: BRILL / BRILL
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited
Subjects: Negativity (Philosophy).; Language and languages;

Rather than being an isolated, primitive body of knowledge the Jewish calendar tradition of 364 days constituted an integral part of the astronomical science of the ancient world. This tradition--attested in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the Pseudepigrapha--stands out as a coherent, novel synthesis, representing the Jewish authors' apocalyptic worldview. The calendar is studied here both "from within"--analyzing its textual manifestations --and "from without"--via a comparison with ancient Mesopotamian astronomy. This analysis reveals that the calendrical realm constituted a significant case of inter-cultural borrowing, pertinent to similar such cases in ancient literature. Special attention is given to the "Book of Astronomy" (1 Enoch 72-82) and a variety of calendrical and liturgical texts from Qumran.