358 ÉTIENNE NODET on average. It is difficult to imagine that such a major festival could have been forgotten by the founding body of rabbinic tradition. Now, Herod persecuted the Pharisees, but loved the Essenes. Josephus says that many religious Jews settled at Bathyra, for they felt secure there. In other words, some Essenes were there, and brought in their calendar and their Passover on Tuesday evening. For them, of course, the feast could never occur on a Sabbath. Moreover, they had a custom of eating the Passover lamb everywhere in the land of Israel 22, and it makes sense that a Babylonian could be ignorant of how to proceed. The story tells us that at some point they had to switch to the lunar calendar. To sum up, the solar calendar was in use at the end of the Second Temple period. According to Jubilees, it was of Biblical origin but it had been lost or forgotten by the majority of the Jews. IV. Annie Jaubert’s Breakthrough: The Solar Biblical Calendar At the beginning of the study of the Qumran documents, b e f o r e the solar calendar of Jubilees h a d been seriously considered, a calendrical problem appeared: the date of Pentecost, also called the Feast of Weeks, was consistently noted to be Sunday, the 15th day of the third month (11QT 19:11–23:2; Jub 6 :17-21; 15:1; 44:1-8). This major festival included a renewal of the Sinaitic Covenant and the admission of neophytes (1QS 1:16– 2 :31). According to Lev 23,15-16, it falls on the day following the completion of seven full weeks (twmymt twtbç) counted from the day after the Sabbath of the wave offering of the barley sheaf (firstfruits). So, if Pentecost occurs on the III/15th, the seven weeks begin on Sunday I/26th. For mainstream Jewish custom 23, the day According to the report of Al-Biruni. Moreover some unbroken bones of 22 lambs, buried in little jars, were unearthed at Qumran; these are clues to Passover meals, see J.-B. HUMBERT, “L’espace sacré à Qumrân: Propositions pour l’archéologie”, RB 101 (1994) 161-214. So Philo, Spec. leg. 2:162; Josephus, Ant. 3 :250 ; b.Men 65a. Josephus 23 and Rabbinic tradition understand the “full weeks” as “7-day periods”, beginning on Nisan 16th without specific connection with a day of the week, so Pentecost may occur on any day. According to t.Rosh ha-Shana 1:15, it happened once that the Boethusians (μyswtyb or μysytyb, maybe “house of