Understanding The Zadokite Priestly Calendar: the starting point found!
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To correctly understand the Zadokite Priestly Calendar you have to have the correct order of Priestly courses and the correct starting point.
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There are 24 Priest families listed in 1 Chronicles 24:6-19
The priestly order stays the same but rotate throughout the 6 years that are recorded
in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
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1st year started with Gamul
2nd year with Jedaiah
3d year with Miyamin
4th year with Shecaniah
5th year with Yeshebeab
6th year with Aphses (Pizzez)
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It's a very simple Method of rotation the Zadok Priest used to make sure that the 7th day SABBATH DAY NEVER CHANGED.
Giving us a 7-day continual week...364-day year of 52 weeks
4 seasons and 12 months.
This rotation also assured the priest stayed in order and everyone worked the same number of days each year.
The Dead Sea Scrolls also recorded a 6-year cycle of jubilee years starting with the 2nd jubilee period thru the 7th jubilee. These jubilee records are extremely valuable in determining the time period of their day and ours. They are a link back to the book of Jubilees and creation. See our PDF file on the Sabbatical and Jubilee years.
The 6-year pattern of jubilee cycles are a 294-year repeating pattern back to creation.
The 1st thing we needed to do is find a starting point and match it with our day and time.
The only way this could be done correctly was by matching the 6 years of priestly courses listed in the Dead Sea Scroll fragments containing the recorded 6-year sun and moon cycles to our day and time.
We did this by using the Dead Sea Scrolls book by Micheal Wise, "A New Translation" and the book "Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English" by Geza Vermes.
When matching up the recorded 6 years of moon calendars with the recorded priestly courses and feast days we were able to see that the year 2019 was a year one Starting with Gamul and the next 5 years continued to match giving us a matching 6 years from 2019 thru 2024. See our work on the 6 calendar years from the DSS.
These same priestly courses won't come around for another 294 years making 2019 thru 2024 very special. The authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls considered when the full moon happened on the 1st day of the year, on the equinox, in a year 1, starting with Gamul, was the same as the CREATION WEEK.
The Priestly courses are very important for setting the calendar because they are the one's given the Authority in 1 Chronicles 28 & 29 under king David.