שמירת השבת על-פי הפרשה 'על השבת' במגילת ברית דמשק: מן הערב או מן הבוקר?

The author here proposes to further buttres his hitherto published theory that, in accordance with the 364-day solar calendar year to which they adhered, the Covenanters observed the Sabbath from Saturday morning to Sunday morning. Like in biblical literature and Jubilees (chaps. 2 and 50), in documents from Qumran the Sabbath is exclusively referred to by the terms שבת,יום (ה)שבת,(עצם) היום הזה and so on, without any mention whatsoever of ערב שבת, 'the eve of the Sabbath'. It is shown that this 'extension of the Sabbath' was presumably geared to the introduction of the lunar calendar in Israel after the return from the Babylonian Exile, no later than the second half of the fifth century BCE. The discussion culminates with comparison of the term למשכים (CD 10:19), which defines the ending of the Sabbath as 'the next morning', found in a proscription in the Sabbath Pericope, preserved only in the Cairo Genizah version of CD, with the term למחשיך 'at nightfall', in almost identical statutes of rabbinic halakhah. The conclusion that the Covenanters observed the Sabbath from morning to morning is further supported by the partly restored term אחר] השבת] in an adjacent statute in the Sabbath Pericope (end of 1. 20), which is a prominent designation of Sunday in calendrical works from Qumran. These findings buttress an earlier suggestion that the medieval scribe 'emended' the original reading of the superscription of the Sabbath Pericope from אל יעש ביום השבת מלאכה to ביום הששי.