Liturgy and Cosmology in the 364-Day Calendar Tradition

In this work Osborne shows how the importance of Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday in the 364-day liturgical calendar used at Qumran is based on what happened on these days according to the Priestly creation narrative in Genesis and the myth of a cosmic covenant established between God and the angels on the first day. He then examines the myth of the apostasy of the angels guiding the seven planets and show how this myth was used to explain the discrepency between the 364-day calendar and observation. Contradictions between and within the Book of the Watchers and the Astronomical Book in '1 Enoch' and 'Jubilees' then make it possible to see that the two Enochian works have been revised to obscure this earlier mythology and bring them into line with contemporary expectations. As a result it is possible to see more clearly the dependence of the 364-day calendar tradition on the astronomical science of Assyria and Babylon. At the same time close analysis of the Epistle of Jude opens the way to further inquiry into the influence of the 364-day calendar tradition on the liturgy and calendar of the nascent Church. --