Paraliterary text: ENA 3235.1 + ENA 3235.2

Description

Calendar manual with distinctive Palestinian calendar traditions, such as the rule of 641–642. Defers to Babylonian calendar rules, in a way that is inconsistent and calendrically impossible. The outcome is a flawed manual that could never have been used. This text confirms that Palestinian calendar rules were preserved for well over a century after the controversy of 921/2. It also provides us, for the first time ever, with explicit evidence of a different version of the Four Gates, based on the month of Nisan. The manuscript can be dated by its script to the late eleventh or early twelfth centuries.93 The text begins on the first folio, and appears to finish at the bottom of the second; thus the manual appears to be preserved completely.