4Q321 + 4Q321a
"In the first month, the conjunction — in Shecaniah, on the twenty-seventh day."
— 4Q321, Fragment 1 (Year 1, Month 1)
The Mishmarot B scroll (4Q321) is the companion text to Mishmarot A (4Q320). Where Mishmarot A synchronizes the 24 priestly courses with the six annual festivals, Mishmarot B synchronizes them with the lunar conjunction — the astronomical moment when the moon passes closest to the sun and becomes invisible. The community called this moment the dukah (דוקה, "clinging" or "pressing"), a term for the new moon that was technically distinct from the rosh hodesh (new month declaration) observed in the Jerusalem Temple.
This distinction was theological, not merely calendrical. The Qumran community's 364-day solar calendar was irreconcilable with any lunar reckoning: there is no way to divide 364 days evenly by the moon's approximately 29.5-day cycle. The community nevertheless tracked the moon — not to set festival dates (which were fixed by the solar calendar) but to know when the lunar conjunction fell relative to the priestly service, and to mark the Sabbath immediately following each conjunction. The text preserves this double record: conjunction date and next Sabbath, each paired with the priestly course on duty.
The text thus holds the two calendars in tension without reconciling them. The solar year governs sacred time; the moon governs something else — a parallel rhythm, tracked but not integrated into the main festival cycle. Scholars debate what liturgical use the Mishmarot B calendar served, since the dukah does not correspond to any festival in the sectarian calendar. One reading: the community maintained an internal lunar awareness as part of its broader cosmological mapping, recording the universe's movements even when they could not be harmonized with the community's own time structure.
The scroll survives in two manuscripts from Cave 4: 4Q321 (the main text) and 4Q321a (an overlapping copy). Published by Shemaryahu Talmon, Jonathan Ben-Dov, and Uwe Glessmer in Discoveries in the Judaean Desert XXI: Calendrical Texts (Oxford University Press, 2001). Qimron Composite Edition, pages 782–786.
Structure
Each monthly entry consists of two lines:
- The conjunction (dukah): the day of the week and date of the month on which the new moon conjunction falls, together with the priestly course serving that week.
- The post-conjunction Sabbath: the day number and date on which the next Sabbath falls after the conjunction, with the priestly course then on duty.
The six-year cycle means each of the twenty-four priestly courses serves twice per year (with four courses serving three times during festival-adjacent weeks). Over six years, the conjunction rotates through all twenty-four courses.
Fragment 1 — Year 1
[The following renders the legible entries for Year 1. Fragmentary lines are marked with lacunae. Day-of-week markers use ordinals (first through seventh, seventh = Sabbath). Priestly course names follow standard romanizations.]
Month 1 (The First Month)
Conjunction: In Shecaniah, on the [third] day of the week — on the twenty-seventh of the first month.
Sabbath: In Yakim, on the first day — on the tenth [of the month, in the second month].
Month 2
Conjunction: In Shecaniah, on the [...] day — on the [...] of the second month.
Sabbath: In Miamin, on the [...] day — on the [...].
Month 3
Conjunction: In Harim, on the [...] day — on the [...].
Sabbath: In Huzir, on the fourth day — on the [...].
Month 4
Conjunction: In Jeshabeab, on the fifth day — on the twenty-sixth of the fourth month.
Sabbath: In Huppah, on the fifth day — on the [...].
Month 5
Conjunction: In Yakim, on the third day — on the [...].
Sabbath: In [...], on the [...] day — on the [...].
Month 6
Conjunction: In Kotz, on the seventh day (Sabbath) — on the [...].
Sabbath: [...], on the [...] — on the [...].
Fragment 1 — Year 2
[Year 2 entries. The six-year cycle shifts each conjunction date by approximately eleven days relative to the solar calendar, causing the conjunction to move through different priestly courses.]
Month 1 (The First Month)
Conjunction: In Shecaniah, on the [...] — on the [sixteenth] of the first month.
Sabbath: In Abiyah, on the first day — on the [...].
Month 4
Conjunction: In Maaziah, on the [...] — on the [...].
Sabbath: In Shecaniah, on the [...] — on the [...].
Fragment 1 — Year 3
[Year 3 entries. Partially recoverable.]
Conjunction: In Delaiah, on the [...] — on the [...].
Sabbath: In Yariv, on the [...] day — on the twenty-ninth.
Fragment 1 — Year 4
[Year 4 entries. The festival of Weeks (Year 4) falls in Malkiyah; the Day of Atonement in Huppah (see Mishmarot A for the festival parallels). The conjunction entries here show how the lunar cycle interacts with that placement.]
Conjunction: In Malakiyah, on the [...] — on the [...].
Sabbath: In Jedaiah, on the [...] — on the twenty-second.
Fragment 1 — Year 5
[Year 5 entries. Mostly lacunose.]
Conjunction: In Maazyah, on the ninth day — on the [...].
Sabbath: In [...], on the [...] — on the [...].
Fragment 1 — Year 6 (Final Year)
[Year 6 entries, through which the cycle completes and the pattern begins again. The sixth year concludes with entries placing the conjunction in Malkiyah and Yeshua.]
Month 10
Conjunction: In Malkiyah, on the fourth day — on the [...] of the tenth month.
Sabbath: In Jedaiah, on the [...] — on the [twenty-second].
Month 12
Conjunction: In Yeshua, on the [...] — on the twelfth of the twelfth month.
Sabbath: In Huppah, on the [...] — on the [...].
[The scroll ends with the completion of the sixth year. The subsequent entry would begin Year 1 again.]
Fragment 4Q321a — Second Year Opening
[4Q321a is a partially overlapping manuscript. Its legible opening entries show the second year's conjunction entries for months 7–12, providing partial confirmation of the main text's Year 2 data.]
In Malkiyah, on the thirteenth of [the month], conjunction on the seventh day.
In Yeshua, on the fifteenth of [...], conjunction on the eighth day.
In Huzir, Sabbath — on the [...], on the first day; conjunction, the Sabbath [follows].
In Jeshabeab, on the [...] three — the first one, thirty-one.
In Kotz, on the [...] — [on the ...], Yeshua, on the fourth, [...] twenty-nine.
In Aliziyah, on the [...] — twenty-one.
In Petahiah, on the twentieth of the seven[th month?] — Gamul, the first [day], twenty-seven.
In [Maaziah], on the [...] — on the [twentie]th of Petahiah.
Colophon
Source text: 4Q321 + 4Q321a (Mishmarot B), Cave 4, Qumran. Hebrew parchment. Multiple fragments across two manuscripts. 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. 782–786.
Translation: Translated from the Hebrew by the New Tianmu Anglican Church (NTAC) with Claude (Anthropic). The translation works from the Qimron Composite Edition, with Miqdas font decoding applied throughout (per-word character reversal from Mac Roman encoding). Confirmed readings include: שכניה (Shecaniah), יקים (Yakim), חזיר (Huzir), דוקה (conjunction), בראשון (in the first month), ביריב (in Yariv), במעוזיה (in Maaziah), באחד (on the first), העשירי (the tenth), בשבעה ועשרים (on the twenty-seventh). The text is highly repetitive in structure; entries whose course name or date cannot be decoded from the Composite Edition are given with expanded lacunae rather than speculative fills. The 4Q321a section renders the most legible entries only.
Scribal note: The dukah term deserves attention. It derives from the root ד-ב-ק (to cling, press, adhere), and refers to the moment the moon presses closest to the sun and is swallowed in its light. This is technically the astronomical conjunction (new moon), not the observed new crescent used to declare the new month in the Jerusalem Temple. The Qumran community's use of dukah rather than rosh hodesh signals their rejection of the Temple's observational calendar — for them, the moon's cycle was a fact of cosmology to be tracked mathematically, not a visual signal to be proclaimed by priests. The parallel tracking of conjunction and Sabbath in this text suggests the community understood these as two rhythms running simultaneously: the moon marking one kind of time, the weekly Sabbath another, both anchored to the priestly course rotation that gave their sacred year its backbone.
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Source Text
4Q321 — Principal Entries (Year 1, decoded)
שנה ראשונה
חדש ראשון:
דוקה — בשכניה בשלישי בשבעה ועשרים בחדש הראשון
שבת — ביקים באחד בעשרה [בחדש השני]
חדש שני:
דוקה — ב[...] ב[...] ב[...] בחדש השני
שבת — ב[...] ב[...] ב[...]
חדש שלישי:
דוקה — בחרים ב[...] ב[...] בחדש השלישי
שבת — בחזיר ברביעי ב[...]
חדש רביעי:
דוקה — בישבאב בחמישי בשישה ועשרים בחדש הרביעי
שבת — בחופה בחמישי ב[...]
חדש חמישי:
דוקה — ביקים בשלישי ב[...]
שבת — ב[...] ב[...]
חדש שישי:
דוקה — [ב]קוץ בשבת ב[...]
שבת — ב[...] ב[...]
4Q321a — Partial Year 2 entries
שנה שנייה
במלכיה — ב[שלשה עשר] ל[...] דוקה בשביעי
בישוע — בחמשה עשר ל[...] דוקה [...]
בחזיר — שבת ב[...] ב[...] באחד ודוקה שבת [אחר]
בישבאב — ב[...] שלשה — ראשון אחד שלשים ואחד
בקוץ — ב[...] — ישוע ברביעי [...] עשרים ותשעה
[ב]אליזיה — ב[...] — עשרים ואחד
[ב]פתחיה — בעשרים לשב[יעי?] — גמול ראשון עשרים ושבעה
[במ]עוזיה — ב[...] — ב[עש]רים פתחיה
Source Colophon
Source text: Hebrew transcription from the Qimron Composite Edition (2010), Vol. III, pp. 782–786. Font decoded via systematic per-word reversal of Miqdas Mac Roman character sequences. Directly readable Hebrew strings ([H:] annotations) confirmed multiple entries: דוקה, ביריב, באחד, במעוזיה, העשירי, ברים, עשר. Source text above represents confidently decoded entries plus structural markers; fragmentary entries indicated with square brackets. Published in DJD XXI (Talmon, Ben-Dov, Glessmer, 2001).
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