A Response to the Alleged "Fallacy of Jaubert's Hypothesis": The Question of Biblical Calendars and the 364-day Year Qumran Flood Calendar (4Q252)

This article reassesses the influential article by Ben Zion Wacholder and Sholom Wacholder which repudiated the hypothesis of Annie Jaubert that an ancient 364-day year calendar exists in the Hebrew Bible. Jaubert argued that in the Hexateuch events took place on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday and that activities on the sabbath were avoided. This study shows that Wacholder and Wacholder’s objections are weak and that they did not falsify her theory. However, I accept the authors’ suggestion that other calendars may exist in the Bible. I re-analyze the chronology of the deluge narrative from Qumran, in 4QCommentary on Genesis A (4Q252), which was not published during Jaubert’s lifetime although, strikingly, she anticipated similar contents in her hypothesis. Accordingly, I propose that there may be more than one biblical calendar, and that Jaubert’s theory remains relevant to this scholarly discourse.