Section 111
103It is unlikely that the calendar recommended to the Colossians was that observed in the Qumran community (the calendar of the book of Jubilees), since the new moon played no part in it. The Jubilees/Qumran month was a calendar month of thirty days, which disregarded the phases of the moon. But even the Pharisees and Sadducees, who shared the lunisolar calendar of 354 days to a year (with appropriate intercalations to correct the rapidly accumulating discrepancy with the solar year), disagreed on several details, including the precise dating of certain festivals. Cf. L. Finkelstein, The Pharisees (Philadelphia, 1946), pp. 115-18, 601-02; A. Jaubert, “Le calendrier des Jubilés,” VT 3 (1953), 250-64; 7 (1957), 35-61; J. Morgenstern, “The Calendar of the Book of Jubilees,” VT 5 (1955), 34-76; R. T. Beckwith, “The Significance of the Calendar for Interpreting Essene Chronology and Eschatology,” Revue de Qumran 10 (1980), 167-202.
104For the quartodeciman controversy see Eusebius, HE 5.23.1-24.18. For a later controversy over the Roman and Celtic computations of Easter see Bede, HE 3.25. The church historian Socrates shows a more Pauline attitude on such questions: “Since no one can produce a written command as an authority, it is evident that the apostles left each one to his own free will in the matter, in order that each might do what is good neither by fear nor by compulsion” (HE 5.22).
105The onus probandi lies on those who argue that the weekly sabbath is not included in this reference. When the sabbath is mentioned in the OT or the NT with no contextual qualification, the weekly sabbath is intended.