The 364-day solar calendar used in the Yahad/Bnei Or stream divided the year into fixed weeks and festival cycles. Because every appointed time fell on the same weekday each year, the calendar expressed a theology of ordered creation rather than priestly improvisation.

Its significance is sectarian as well as practical: using this calendar separated the community from the Jerusalem temple schedule and marked the temple establishment as corrupt or wrongly ordered.

Sources: Dead Sea Scrolls calendar texts; 1 Enoch; Jubilees; Temple Scroll; Community Rule.

The fixed 364-day scheme also creates a social boundary. Anyone who follows the temple lunar schedule will keep Passover, Weeks, Trumpets, Atonement, and Booths on different days from the Yahad. That makes shared sacrifice impossible and turns timekeeping into a sign of covenant loyalty. The calendar belongs beside the Yahad/Bnei Or cluster because it explains why the group could see itself as the ordered remnant while the public sanctuary operated on corrupted time. It also clarifies the group’s priestly character: the argument is not against sacred time, but for a different, revealed ordering of sacred time.