DAN-IEL 7:25 "...INTENTARA CAMBIAR LOS TIEMPOS Y LA LEY.." - DESENMASCARANDO LAS FALSAS DOCTRINAS

Another excerpt from James VanderKam's Dead Sea Scroll Calendar studies:

'It would be helpful to know which calendar was employed in the second temple. It will be recallled that Jaubert believed the 364 day solar year was used for the official cultic purposes in the first pard of the period, but she also thought that lunar modifications were introduced into the system at a later time. Ben Sira, with his statements about the moon and festal dates, is supposed to reflect this modified state of affairs. But none of her reconstruction is conclusive. There is no firm evidence that a lunar or luni-solar calendar served that function of dating the ancient Biblical Festivals celebrated in Jerusalem. The Elephantine garrison used a luni-solar calendar but did so for official documents because it was the practice of the wider world, not because it had inherited the calendar from cultic practices n Jerusalem.

The first hint that the cultic calendar of the Jerusalem temple became a point of dispute is found in Daniel 7:25. There it is said that the little horn on the forth beast of Daniel's vision "shall speak words against the Most High, shall wear out the holy ones of the Most High, and shall attempt to change the sacred seasons (literally, the times) and the law." The character symbolized as the little horn is recognized to be Antiochus IV (175-164 bce) who banned the practice of Judaism in 167 bce. His efforts at changing the times seem to involve calendrical issues; in fact, the vague reference in Dan 7:25 may point to an attempt by the Seleucid government to force a new calendar on the Jewish people (Collins 1993: 322).

Support for this comes from the the boo of Maccabees. 2 macc 6:7, which describes some of Antiocus' polocies against the Jewish religion, reports that: "On the monthly celebration of the king's birthday, the Jews were taken, under bitter constraint, to partake of the sacrifices; and when a festival of Dionysus was celebrated, they were compelled to wear wreathes of ivy and to walk in the procession in honor of Dionysus." Of particular interest here is the mention of monthly celebration of the royal birthday. This practice which is more widely attested in the Hellenistic royal cults took place on a specific day each month - the date on which the king had been born- and presumably served a pracitical function by encouraging popular loyalty to the devine king. But if the king's birthday was to be observed on the correct date, one had to follow the proper calendar. In the case of the Seleucid empire, that calendar was a luni-solar arrangement. It appears from this verse that the Jews were compelled to celebrate a holiday that was dated according to a Seleucid calendar. 1 Macc 1:45 confirms that the royal policy involved profaning Sabbaths and Festivals, that is the Jews were apparently not permitted to celebrate their own holidays but were forced to observe Seleucid ones. 2 Macc 6:6, "People could neither keep the Sabbath not observe the Festivals of their ancestors."

The monthly celebration of the king's birthday was commerated in the temple as referenced in 1 Macc 1:59 and 2 Macc 6:7. The 25th appears to have been the date of the royal birthday, and on it sacrifices were presented on the alter in the temple in Jerusalem. That is, the Seleucid calendar now regulated festivals and sacrifices in the sanctuary of the Lord (VanderKam 1981: 52-74).

The temple was taken by Judas Maccabeus and his troops in 164 bce when they cleansed it and redidicated it to the service of the God of Israel. The decrees against the Jewish religion were not officially revoked, however until 162 bce. What the calendrical situation in the temple may have been after 162 is never stated in the sources. But soon thereafter a peculiar situation developed. Our sources, which document the presence of a High Priest from the beginning of the 2nd temple (c. 516 bce) and continue without interruption, mention no such Priest for the years 159 (when the high priest Alcimus died) until 152 (when Jonathan was appointed to the office). What happened during those seven years? The honest answer is that we do not know, but there is some intriguing evidence that someone mat have been high priest at that time although he remains anonymous. The evidence comes from one of the letters preserved in 1 Maccabees 10. In it Demetrius, one of the pretenders to the Seleucid throne, refers twice to the high priest at a time when there was not supposed to be one (10:32,38). If these allusions reflect a time when, judging from the silence of the sources, there was no reigning high priest, it would suggest that somethinng strange was happening. Was there actually a high priest or an acting high priest whose name was alter dropped from the history record?

Jonathan, the first Hasmonean high priest, was not from the Oniad family that had produced the high priests until 175 bce, although he was a priest. A series of Seleucid appointees to the post had held the office from 175( Jason, Menelaus, and Alcimus), but Jonathan was appointed in 152 bce because of the military support he could offer to whoever gave him the office. Whether he was inclined to reject the Seleucid calendar is not clear, but at least he owed his position to the royal nomination and may have preferred to keep the Seleucid calendar if in fact it was still in use in the temple, or may have reintroduced it if it was not practiced there. Jonathan remains the best candidate for being the Wicked Priest who was the lethal opponent of the Teacher of Righteousness. It is widely accepted that "Wicked Priest" (Hebrew, ha-kohen ha-rasha) is a play on the expression of "high priest" (ha-kohen ha-rosh). We know from Pesher Hanakkuk that the Wicked Priest and the Teacher followed different festal calendars, since they did not observe the Day of Attonement as the same time.

Several of the texts found at Qumran are insistant that all Israel had gone astray with respect to the festivals, God's sacred times. There is reason to believe that a calendar dispute lies behind such sediments, and the Qumran covenanters were convinced that their calendar had ancient, Scriptural support. 4QMMT, which preserve a record of points at dispute between the Qumran community and their Jewish opponents, begins, as far as we can tell, with a statement about the 364 day calendar (the which must be partially restored), thus suggesting that calendar was one of the issues that seperated the two sides. The Teacher would have been ab advocate of the tradional 364 day calendar, one that does indeed have a more ancient pedigree as the Astronomical Book shows. It may be that a conserative priest like the Teacher, whose powerful position as they come to expression in the Hodayot make one think that he once held a high rank, although he did so now only in his community, tried to (re)introduce the 364 day solar calendar into the Temple after the Seleucid threat had been removed. However, any position he would have advocated would have become a moot point when Jonathan and his army arrived to take over the temple and the high priesthood. This may have been the occasion that caused the Teacher to lead his followers into exile where they could practice their religion using the calendar that God revealed that they they alone understood.

While much of this reconstruction remains speculative, we are at least allowed to say that in the disputes which eventually led to the exile of the Qumran community the correct, Divinely revealed calendar played a noteworthy part.'