Pilgrimage and Festival Observance in Early Judaism

The Torah enumerates three festivals at which all males are required to bring offerings to the sanctuary: Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot (Exodus 23:14–17; 34:18–21; Deuteronomy 16:1–16). In the First and Second Temple periods, these festivals would bring Jews from throughout the land of Israel to Jerusalem. Jewish writers living during the Second Temple period and after the Temple’s destruction in 70 CE described these pilgrimages, explained their function, and elaborated on their laws.

The precise times when the biblical festivals were to be observed became a point of sectarian controversy in the late Second Temple period. The biblical lunar calendar required periodic intercalation of an extra month so that Passover would always fall in the spring. The book of Jubilees instead presents a more symmetrical, solar calendar: a year of 364 days comprised of four quarters of ninety days each (with three thirty-day months), to which are added four days, one at the end of each quarter. With this system, every festival falls on the same day of the week each year. This calendar is also reflected in the Enoch literature (1 Enoch 74:10–12) and many of the texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls found at Qumran, including the Temple Scroll (see “The Temple Scroll”).