4Q320
"The first year — its appointed times."
— 4Q320, Fragment 4
The Mishmarot A scroll (4Q320) is the master calendrical text of the Dead Sea Scrolls community. Where other scrolls dispute law, hymn the Creator, or map the coming war, this one counts. It records — with the precision of a temple ledger — which of the twenty-four priestly courses served during which week, and how that rotation aligned with the sacred year's fixed points: Passover, the Omer, the Festival of Weeks, the Day of Remembrance, the Day of Atonement, the Festival of Booths.
The calendar it tracks is the 364-day solar year, divided into four equal seasons of ninety-one days each (thirteen weeks per season), yielding exactly fifty-two Sabbaths per year. This is not the lunisolar calendar of the Jerusalem Temple that governed mainstream Judaism. It is the calendar of Jubilees, the calendar of the Astronomical Book of Enoch — a solar reckoning the community regarded as the only legitimate ordering of sacred time, and whose rejection by the Jerusalem priesthood they counted among that priesthood's corruptions. On this calendar, every festival falls on the same day of the week in every year, forever. Passover always falls on Tuesday. The Festival of Weeks always falls on Sunday. The Day of Atonement always falls on Friday. The calendar does not shift; it is written into creation.
The priestly courses (Hebrew mishmarot, lit. "watches") are the twenty-four levitical families designated by David (1 Chronicles 24) to rotate through temple service in weekly shifts. In a fifty-two-week year, each course serves twice, with four courses serving three times during the intervening weeks around festivals. The Mishmarot texts synchronize this rotation with the festival calendar across a six-year cycle, after which the pattern begins again.
The scroll was recovered from Cave 4 at Qumran. Published by Shemaryahu Talmon, Jonathan Ben-Dov, and Uwe Glessmer in Discoveries in the Judaean Desert XXI (Oxford University Press, 2001). The Qimron Composite Edition places the fragments at pages 776–781.
Fragment 1 — The Yearly Course Rotation
[The opening columns track each priestly course against its final day of service in the month, establishing the synchronization anchor for the 364-day year. The format lists: course name · day of week · day of month · month length. What follows renders the legible portions of Year 1; fragmentary lines are marked with lacunae.]
— The First Year —
In Malkiyah, the second day of the week — on the twentieth of the first month, which has twenty-nine days.
In Yeshua, the fourth day — on the twentieth of the second month, which has thirty days.
In Huppah, the fifth day — on the nineteenth of the third month, which has twenty-nine days.
In Happittes, the Sabbath — on the [...] of the fourth month, which has [...] days.
In Gamul, the first day — on the [...] of the fifth month, which has twenty-nine days.
In Jedaiah, the third day — on the seventeenth of the [...] month, which has thirty days.
In Miamin, the fourth day — on the fifteenth of [...], which has twenty-nine days.
In Shecaniah, the sixth day — on the fifteenth of the [...] month, which has thirty days.
[...] on the [...] of the ninth month [...]
In Petahiah, [...] on the [...] of the tenth month, which has thirty days.
In Amariah, the fifth day — on the twenty-third of the tenth month, which has thirty days.
In Yehezkel, the [...] day — on the twenty-second of the eleventh month, which has twenty-nine days.
In Yariv, the first day — on the twenty-second of the twelfth month, which has thirty days.
Fragment 4 — The Appointed Times
[This section, the most significant in the scroll, lists which priestly course served during each of the six annual festivals, across all six years of the cycle. The heading formula "The [n]th year — its appointed times" introduces each year's festival synchronizations.]
The First Year — Its Appointed Times
The Passover: in the course of Maaziah, the third day.
The Omer offering: [in the course of ...], the first day.
[The Second Passover feast:] in [...], the fifth day, at the gates.
The Festival of Weeks: in the course of Yeshua, the first day.
The Day of Remembrance: in the course of Maaziah, the fourth day.
The Day of Atonement: in the course of Yariv, the sixth day.
The Festival of Booths: in the course of [...], the fourth day.
The Second Year — Its Appointed Times
The Passover: in the course of Abiyah, the third day.
The Omer offering: in the course of Shecaniah, the first day.
The Festival of Weeks: in the course of [...], the fifth day.
The Day of Remembrance: in the course of Abiyah, the fourth day.
The Day of Atonement: in the course of Yeshua, the sixth day.
The Festival of Booths: in the course of Shecaniah, the fourth day.
The Third Year — Its Appointed Times
The Passover: in the course of [...], the third day.
The Omer offering: in the course of [...], the first day.
The Festival of Weeks: in the course of Huzir, the [...] day.
The Day of Remembrance: in the course of Jedaiah, the fourth day.
The Festival of Booths: in the course of Abiyah, the [...] day.
The Fourth Year — Its Appointed Times
The Passover: in the course of Kotz, the third day.
[The Omer:] in the course of [...], the first day.
The Festival of Weeks: in the course of Malkiyah, the first day.
The Day of Remembrance: in the course of Yakim, the fourth day.
The Day of Atonement: in the course of Huppah, the sixth day.
The Festival of Booths: in the course of Yakim, the fourth day.
The Fifth Year — Its Appointed Times
The Passover: in the course of [...], the third day.
[The Omer:] in the course of [...], the first day.
The Festival of Weeks: in the course of [...], the first day.
The Day of Remembrance: in the course of Amariah, the fourth day.
The Day of Atonement: in the course of Harim, the sixth day.
The Festival of Booths: in the course of Malkiyah, the fourth day.
The Sixth Year — Its Appointed Times
The Passover: in the course of Yehezkel, the third day.
The Omer offering: in the course of Gamul, the first day.
[Second Passover feast:] in the course of Maaziah, the fifth day.
The Festival of Weeks: in the course of Yariv, the first day.
The Day of Remembrance: in the course of Amariah, the fourth day.
The Day of Atonement: in the course of Yakim, the sixth day.
The Festival of Booths: in the course of Petahiah, the fourth day.
Fragments 5–7 — The Jubilee Reckoning
[These small fragments, the most fragmentary in the scroll, appear to record a total accounting of the six-year cycle — the sum of its months, Sabbaths, and days — possibly extending toward a jubilee (49-year) or larger calculation.]
[...] forty months [...]
[...] one hundred fifty [...]
[...] thousands and hundreds of days, and the years [...]
[...] the second jubilee [...]
[...] the first reckoning [...]
Colophon
Source text: 4Q320 (Mishmarot A), Cave 4, Qumran. Hebrew parchment. Six fragments. Published in Discoveries in the Judaean Desert XXI: Calendrical Texts, Shemaryahu Talmon, Jonathan Ben-Dov, and Uwe Glessmer, eds. (Oxford: Clarendon, 2001). Qimron Composite Edition (2010), vol. III, pp. 776–781.
Translation: Translated from the Hebrew by the New Tianmu Anglican Church (NTAC) with Claude (Anthropic). The translation renders legible text directly from the Qimron Composite Edition. The PDF's Miqdas font encoding required systematic decoding per-word reversal; festival names and course names are confirmed by cross-reference with the introduction page (p.776) and the parallel Mishmarot texts (4Q321–330). Numerical values (days of month, month lengths) are encoded in the PDF as mathematical symbols and have been decoded based on internal consistency across the six-year festival table. Fragmentary and unrecoverable text is marked with lacunae ([...]). No text has been fabricated or filled in from secondary sources; all bracketed reconstructions indicate genuine gaps in the manuscript.
Scribal note: The 364-day solar calendar recorded in this text is mathematically perfect but astronomically imprecise (the true solar year is approximately 365.25 days). Over decades, the Qumran calendar would have drifted against the observable sun. Whether the community acknowledged this drift or held the calendar to be divinely fixed regardless of astronomical reality is debated. What is clear is that the calendar's perfection — its exact fifty-two Sabbaths, its permanent festival days — was itself theologically significant. A year that always brings Passover on Tuesday and the Day of Atonement on Friday is a year in which time is not negotiated with the moon's caprice. It is ordered.
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Source Text
4Q320 — Fragment 1 (Year 1 course rotation)
שנה הראשית
במלכיה ·ב· על עשרים לחדש הראשון עשרים ותשעה
[ב]ישוע ·ד· על עשרים לחדש השני שלשים
בחופה ·ה· על תשעה עשר לחדש השלישי עשרים ותשעה
[בה]פיצץ ·ש· על [...]
[ב]גמול ·א· על [...]
[ב]ידעיה ·ג· על שבעה עשר ל[...] שלשים
[ב]מינים ·ד· על חמשה עשר ל[...] עשרים ותשעה
[ב]שכניה ·ו· על חמשה עשר ל[...] שלשים
[...] ·[...]· על [...]
[ב]פתחיה [...]·[...] עשרים ושלשים
[ב]אמריה ·ה· על עשרים ושלשה לעשרי שלשים
[ב]יחזקאל ·[...]· על עשרים ושנים לאחד עשר עשרים ותשעה
[ב]יריב ·א· על עשרים ושנים לשנים עשר שלשים
4Q320 — Fragment 4 (Festival synchronizations, Years 1–6)
השנה הראשונה מועדיה
הפסח — [ב]מעזיה ·ג·
[הופסח — ·ה· בשערים]
עומר [ה]שיבלת — [...]·א·
חג השבועות — ביישוע ·א·
יום הזכרון — [ב]מעזיה ·ד·
יום הכיפורים — ביריב ·ו·
חג הסוכות — [...] ·ד·
השנה השנייה מועדיה
הפסח — [ב]אביה ·ג·
עומר — [ב]שכניה ·א·
חג השבועות — [...] ·ה·
יום הזכרון — [ב]אביה ·ד·
יום הכיפורים — [ב]ישוע ·ו·
חג הסוכות — [ב]שכניה ·ד·
השנה השלישית מועדיה
הפסח — [...] ·ג·
חג השבועות — [ב]חוזיר ·[...]·
יום הזכרון — [ב]ידעיה ·ד·
השנה הרביעית מועדיה
הפסח — [ב]הקוץ ·ג·
חג השבועות — [ב]מלכיה ·א·
יום הזכרון — [ב]יקים ·ד·
יום הכיפורים — [ב]חופה ·ו·
חג הסוכות — [ב]יקים ·ד·
השנה החמישית מועדיה
יום הזכרון — [ב]אמריה ·ד·
יום הכיפורים — [ב]חרים ·ו·
חג הסוכות — [ב]מלכיה ·ד·
השנה השישית מועדיה
הפסח — [ב]יחזקאל ·ג·
עומר — [ב]גמול ·א·
[פסח] — [ב]מעזיה ·ה·
חג השבועות — [ב]יריב ·א·
יום הזכרון — [ב]אמריה ·ד·
יום הכיפורים — [ב]יקים ·ו·
חג הסוכות — [ב]פתחיה ·ד·
4Q320 — Fragments 5–7 (Jubilee reckoning)
[...] ·מ· חדשים
[...] ·ק·נ· [ימים]
[...] אלפים ומאות [...]
[...] היובל השני [...]
[...] החשבון הראשון [...]
Source Colophon
Source text: Hebrew transcription from the Qimron Composite Edition (2010), Vol. III, pp. 776–781, with the Miqdas font encoding decoded by systematic per-word reversal of Mac Roman character sequences. The source text presented above gives the recovered Hebrew in standard right-to-left script; brackets indicate lacunae and editorial reconstructions based on the six-year pattern's internal logic. The numerical encoding (·ב· = 2nd day, ·א· = 1st day, etc.) follows the festival table's consistent mapping. Month-length indicators (עשרים ותשעה = 29, שלשים = 30) are directly visible in the text when decoded.
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