The Three Shavuot Festivals of Qumran: Wheat, Wine, and Oil

This piece is based on my larger article, Marvin A. Sweeney, “Sefirah at Qumran: Aspects of the Counting Formulas for the First-Fruits Festivals in the Temple Scroll,” BASOR 251 (1983) 61-66, republished in Reading Prophetic Books: Form, Intertextuality and Reception in Prophetic and Post-Biblical Literature (FAT 89; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 337-345.

Deut 7:13, 11:14.

Jer 31:11; Hos 2:10, 24; Joel 2:19, 24; Neh 5:11; 2 Chron 32:28.

Deut 28:51; 2 Kings 18:32; Joel 1:10, Hag 1:11.

Editor’s note: See, Zev Farber, “Making Ma’aser Work for the Times,” TheTorah.com(2015).

See also, Deut 12:17, 18:4; Neh 10:38, 40, 13:5; 2 Chron 31:5.

Oded Borowski, Daily Life in Biblical Times (Atlanta: SBL, 2003), 28. The agricultural seasons are laid out in what scholars call “the Gezer Calendar,” a Canaanite document discovered in 1908 at Tel Gezer by R.A.S. Macalister, and dated to the 10^th century (roughly the time of David):

ירחו אסף
ירחו זרע
ירחו לקש
ירח עצד פשת
ירח קצר שערם
ירח קצר וכל
ירחו זמר
ירח קץ
אבי[ה]

The (2) months of ingathering
The (2) months of planting
The (2) months of rain
The month of cutting flax
The month of harvesting barley
The month of harvesting & measuring (wheat)
The (2) months of pruning
The month of summer (fruit)
Abiy[ah]

See also, Philip J. King and Lawrence E. Stager, Life in Biblical Israel (Library of Ancient Israel; Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 88.

In Ugarit, a coastal city farther north in modern day Syria, which was destroyed in 12^thcentury B.C.E., the month of Ellul was named Rashu-Yeni (ראשית היין), “the first of the wine,” during which a wine festival was held, including a grape offering to the god, Ilu (=El). See, Dennis Pardee, Ritual and Cult at Ugarit (Writings from the Ancient World 10; Atlanta: SBL, 2002), 63-65.

For an introduction to the Dead Sea Scrolls, see James C. VanderKam, The Dead Sea Scrolls Today, 2^nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010 [orig. pub. 1994]); John J. Collins, The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Biography (Lives of Great Religious Books; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012); Timothy H. Lim, The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Very Short Introduction, 2^nd ed. (Very Short Introductions; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017 [orig. pub. 2005]).

This latter text is very fragmentary but and was only recently deciphered; see discussion in, Eshbal Ratzon and Jonathan Ben-Dov, “A Newly Reconstructed Calendrical Scroll from Qumran in Cryptic Script,” JBL 136.4 (2017): 905-936.

For an English diplomatic edition of the Temple Scroll (admittedly dated), see Yigael Yadin, The Temple Scroll (3 vols.; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society; Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1982).

Readings follow, Elisha Qimron, The Dead Sea Scrolls: The Hebrew Writings, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi, 2010 [Hebrew]), 137-207. The column references are to the text of 11Q19, but Qimron’s edition is a composite and takes into consideration readings from 11Q20, and related fragments (such as overlapping parts from 4QReworked Pentateuch) that fill in some of the missing pieces.

Here, the writers of the Temple Scroll eliminated the controversial phrase ממחרת השבת, “from the day following the Shabbat,” and substituted instead the reference to the presentation offering of the `Omer. Even so, in the Qumran calendar, the omer was always offered on the Sunday after Matzot, which, in Qumran’s 364-day solar calendar, always fell out on the 26^th of Nissan.

Others suggest מקרא קדש “a holy convocation.”

Why it waits to do it here and not in the previous passage is unclear.

The last line is partially reconstructed from 4Q365 (Reworked Pentateuch), which has an overlapping discussion of these holidays.

Editor’s note: For more on this, see Alex Jassen, “The Wood Offering Celebration: A Torah Festival?” TheTorah.com (2018).

For more on the 364-day sectarian solar calendar, see Michael Segal, “The Jewish Calendar in Jubilees,” TheTorah.com (2014).