A new proposal may resolve a 2,000-year-old mystery tied to the Dead Sea Scrolls. Researchers suggest that the Qumran sect really did use its distinctive 364-day calendar, a system long considered puzzling by scholars.
The calendar was perfectly ordered into 52 weeks, which meant holidays always fell on the same weekdays. However, because 364 days do not match the solar year, the calendar would have slowly drifted out of sync with the seasons over time.
This explanation, reported by ScienceDaily, offers a coherent answer to how the community might have structured time — while also acknowledging the calendar's inherent limitations. The source does not mention any competing theories, so the proposal stands as the sole explanation presented in the report.