The Septenary Calendar
The perpetual 364-day Calendar is often mistakenly labeled to be a "solar" calendar. The Calendar found in Qumran is not a solar calendar (articulated around the cycle of the sun), but a Septenary Calendar (articulated around the number "7"). The Septenary Calendar is the only calendar of in the world that is not exclusively built around the sun or the moon, but instead takes them into consideration while exclusively constructing time keeping around the 7-day week of Creation, in honor to YHWH, the God of Creation.
The many different types of calendars
A calendar is an organization of time which divides it in different parts in order to better keep track of it. It is important to realize that the number of calendars can be endless, possibly as numerous as the number of creative individuals on earth capable to invent one. Some calendrical characteristics remained popular through history: the lunar calendars, the solar calendars, the luni-solar calendars...
In a Lunar Calendar, the cycles of the moon are the most important and are taken into account for the division of time.
The Hijri Calendar for the Muslim is a perfect exemple of an exclusively lunar calendar. The months are lunar and the year is made up of a succession of a strict 12 lunar cycles. There is no intercalation in this model. However, as any potential calendar that does not intercale, it ends up producing an unavoidably drifts over time. The gradual shift away from the natural rhythm of the seasons accumulates, year after year, the lunar months will shift more and more, and the seasons are not upheld. For instance, the 1st month of the Hijri Calendar will be in summer one year, but will occur in the middle of winter several years down the road.
The Luni-Solar Calendar is also a Lunar Calendar but it seeks to compensate for the accumulative drift away from the seasons by inserting a 13th month when necessary. The rabbinical calendar follows this model. It inserts an extra lunar month, Adar II, approximately once every three years. The cycle of 7 week days floats independently from the rest of the calendar. Weekly days do not ever correspond to the calendrical dates. This means that a weekly shabbat can fall randomly on different luni-solar calendrical dates. This is why the holy convocations sometimes occur on a weekly shabbat, forcing rabbinical postponing rules to occur in order to adjust.
The most deviant lunisolar calendars are those that change the order of the days of the week. The Lunar Sabbath Calendar for exemple is done to exclusively follow the phases of the moon and reorganizes the week in periods of 7 days, 7 days, 7 days and 8 days, or sometimes 7 days, 8 days, 7 days and 8 days, profaning the most ancient and sacred unbroken cycle of 7 days (see The biblical week).
A Solar Calendar is exclusively governed by the solar cycle. The Gregorian calendar is an example of a solar calendar. Its number of days is calculated exclusively on the solar cycle: 365-366 days. In the Gregorian Calendar, a day is inserted around every 4 years in order to stay in accordance with the seasons. Its calendrical dates also remain completely detached from the days of the week. This is why for instance Jan 1st falls on different days of the week each year.
There are other Solar Calendars being used, including the ones that are misleadingly called the "Enoch Calendars". These solar interpretations of the Book of Henock. They forget to take into consideration the Calendrical Scrolls of Qumran and sometimes Jubilees. However, fragments of the book of hebraic Henock were found along with the book of Jubilees and all the calendrical scrolls in Qumran proving that these texts cannot be read or understood without the context of each other.
Unfortunately these so-called Enoch Calendars are often exclusively interpretated to be ruled by the solar cycle, which is recalls the Gregorian calendar. According to these solar versions of Enoch, the year begins immediately after the equinox (spring or autumn depending on the interpretation) and consists of 365-366 days / year. Usually their dates remain detached from the weekly cycle of the 7-day week. For the so called solar Enoch Calendars that do start on the 4th day of the week, they are forcing the week days to change year after year (the equinox falling on different week days each year). The cycle of the week is therefore broken every year by the solar enoch calendar, as it is forcibly distorts the week day into the solar cycle. Any calendar that change the order of the days of the week are dangerously risking to lose the original 7-day week pattern forever (see the Biblical Week)
All versions of Calendars end up being deviant, except…
The Septenary Calendar, the true Calendar of YHWH, for it is holy, set apart, and backed up by archeology, the scrolls having been dated back to the 1st century. It is not a calendar created by men, nor is it in honor to the sun or the moon. This is original Calendar from Adam is in honor of the Creator, as He is described in the book of Genesis.
The Calendar's structure directly echoes the 7 days of Creation, as its whole structure is articulated around the number 7.
It is composed of 364 days, which is divisible by 7.
It is also articulated around 7 pentacontads each composed of 49 days (being 7 times 7 days, or 7 weeks), in addition to 3 weekly cycles of 7 days:
(49 x 7) + (3 x 7) = 364 days.
Its intercalation is an epagomenal block of 7 days. The intercalation is not like in the other calendars, which insert one single day, an entire lunar month, or random numbers of days.
Each Feast falls perpetually on the same day of the week, year after year. The synchronicity of the Perpetual 364-day Calendar of YHWH is matched nowhere else.
The number of days in the year is not defined by the sun (365-366 days), nor by the moon (354 days), but by the weekly count (52 weeks of 7 days = 364 days).
YHWH's original calendar is therefore perpetually septenary and continuously linked to the 7 day week. It is the only calendar that is articulated around the number 7, for 7 is the number of perfection which symbolizes God. The primary function of this Calendar is therefore to point to the Creator God of Heaven and Earth, as described in Genesis. It is set apart from all the other cultures for they all worship the sun or the moon in their pagan calendars.
The perpetual Calendar of YHWH has the remarkable additional advantage to take into account simultaneously the solar cycle, the lunar cycle and the agricultural cycles in its arrangement. The sun is indeed a heralding "sign" that the beginning of the year is imminent. The full moon is a "mark", a seal of importance on they days it falls on, clothing the feasts with its full light when they are of particular importance. The earth and its agricultural cycles are linked to both the cycle of the sun and of the moon as well, and organised in the Calendar's pentacontad feasts.
YHWH's is a simple to understand calendar, easy to remember & available to all, while at the same time showing deep complexities in its symbolic and mathematical values. It is truly unique, perfect and different from other calendars.
It is the perpetual Septenary Calendar. YHWH rose it back to life from its 2000 year old sleep of the caves of Qumran, and God chose to do this in the days for our generations for a reason.
