355 ON JESUS’ LAST SUPPER Some calendrical documents from the Qumran cave 4 describe the service cycle of the priestly courses and give the dates of the major festivals 15. The introduction of one text refers to the Creation week (4Q 320:1-3): “[...] to its being seen from the east ]to[ sh]ine[ in ]the middle of the heaven at the foundation of Creation from evening until morning on the 4th day of the week”. Indeed, in Gen 1,16 we read: “The greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night”. This means that the Creation work started with a full moon. Moreover, every day of that week includes a piece of creation, an evening and a morning 16. In other words, the days are reckoned from the morning — a fact which is not consistent with the lunar calendar. Thus, the main point of that introduction is to stress that the lunar calendar, which focuses on the new moon, is unbiblical. The year contains 364 days, divided into four quarters, starting with the solstices and equinoxes. Rabbinic tradition knows these divisions (twpwqt) and states that each one spans 91 days and 7.5 hours. Thus this astral year has 365.25 days, which matches the Julian calendar. We do not know how the solar calendar was adjusted to the solar year, which is longer by 1.25 day. Two possibilities were at hand, depending on the way of keeping the Sabbath cycles. A simple calculation shows that by adding seven weeks over 28 years, the discrepancy with the solar year is canceled out. Another possibility is to add one or two days every year, that is, to have some longer weeks or blank days. Some texts suggest such a correction. The corruption of the Sabbaths and festivals, cited See S. TALMON – J. BEN-DOV – U. GLESSMER, Qumran Cave 4. XVI – 15 Calendrical Texts (Discoveries in the Judaean Desert XII; Oxford 2001) 1-92. Some indications in the documents seem to reflect Babylonian astronomic traditions for the connection of the solar calendar and the phases of the moon, see J. BEN-DOV & W. HOROWITZ, “The Babylonian Lunar Three in Calendrical Scrolls from Qumran”, Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, 95 (2005) 104-120. So the rabbinic tradition (Rashbam); the proof texts for the lunar 16 calendar are eastern narratives: Est 4,16 “a fast for three days, nights and days”; in Dan 8,14 the persecutions are to last “2300 evenings and mornings” (see t.Taanit 2 :5). Incidentally, the MT of Gen 2,2 conceals a problem, since it reads “ and on the 7th day God finished his work”, while other witnesses (but not the Vulgate) have “on the 6th day ”. It can be shown that the variant 7th is a correction that introduces the Temple Sabbath, for it begins in the evening (War 4 :582 ; m.Sukkah 4 :11), that is, before the end of the solar 6th day.