Rachel Elior on Ancient Jewish Calendars: A Critique

Rachel Elior's new book The Three Temples. On the Emergence of Jewish Mysticism (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2004), first published in Hebrew in 2001, purports to trace the origins of Jewish mysticism through a broad, interpretative study of ancient Judaism. It focuses on Apocryphal, sectarian, and early mystical literature, including the books of Ezekiel, Enoch, Jubilees, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and finally the Heikhalot. Particular importance is placed on the Temple, priests, and priestly worship-originally historical realities, later heavenly ideals. But considerable attention is also devoted to ancient Jewish calendars and their ideological significance.

My intention here is not to review the book as a whole, but only to assess Elior's interpretation of ancient Jewish calendars-which, I should state from the outset, differs radically from mine.¹ But her interpretation of calendars fits into a wider thesis that pervades the book, and that must first be outlined.

Elior's main thesis rests on an opposition between two separate strands in ancient Judaism, the priestly and the rabbinic. The priestly strand, according to Elior, was initiated by the Zadokite priesthood that she believes had controlled the Jerusalem Temple and its cult from the early period of the Israelite monarchy until the reign of Antiochus IV. After the Maccabean revolt, the Zadokite priesthood was ousted by the new Hasmonean dynasty. Deprived of access to the Temple, the Zadokite priests-some of whom found their way to Qumran-constructed for themselves the concept of a mystical, abstract, and heavenly Temple as a substitute. This priestly tradition, she holds, was preserved in various forms in Apocryphal literature, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the (unwritten) Merkavah tradition, and later the Heikhalot, thus laying the foundations of Jewish mysticism. The Jewish mainstream, in contrast, passed into the hands of the Sages who composed rabbinic literature and founded rabbinic Judaism.

This proposed dichotomy between priest and sage is not born out by the evidence, and indeed is contradicted by it. It suffices to point out, on the one hand, the centrality of the Temple, sacrificial cult, and priestly traditions in early rabbinic literature (e.g., order Kodashim in the Mishnah), and on the other hand, the prominence of rabbinic figures such as R. Ishmael and R. Akiva in the Heikhalot. The historical foundation of Elior's thesis is thus quite problematic: priest and sage may have been distinct, but they always remained closely related.

On the basis of this invented priest/sage dichotomy, however, Elior proceeds to dichotomize calendrical traditions and allocate the 364-day or "solar" calendar of Enoch, Jubilees, and Qumran to the priestly tradition and the lunar calendar to mainstream rabbinic Judaism. Again, this polarization of ancient Jewish calendars is simplistic and reductionist. It is true that the book of Jubilees presents its 364-day calendar as solar and polemicizes against the dominant Jewish lunar calendar. But Elior entirely ignores the lunar element that pervades Qumran calendrical sources, where the annual 364-day calendar of Jubilees is frequently synchronized with a 3-year cycle of lunar months.² This lunar calendar receives only the briefest of mentions in the book (pp. 43 and 133-4); but it undermines the solar/lunar dichotomy that Elior assumes. The relationship between solar and lunar calendars was actually far more complex than she is willing to recognize.

Furthermore, Elior uncritically accepts Jaubert's theory (formulated in the 1950s) that the 364-day calendar was that of the Bible, ancient Israel, and the First Temple priesthood (pp. 84-5, 155-6 n.8), unaware that this theory has been convincingly refuted, among others by Wacholder.³ Similarly, she accepts uncritically VanderKam's theory that this 364-day calendar was abolished and replaced with the lunar calendar under Antiochus IV, unaware of Davies' counter-argument that the lunar calendar must have been in use at least from the beginning of the Second Temple period.⁴ The few arguments adduced by Elior in support of Jaubert's and VanderKam's theories (on p. 85) are derisory: that the Temple day began in the morning (if anything, a practical necessity...