The Essene calendar consisted of a solar calendar of 364 days divided into seven-day weeks, twelve months of thirty days each except for one extra day in the last month of each quarter. The major feasts, e.g., the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Feast of Trumpets, the Feast of Tabernacles, and the Great Day (the eighth day of the Feast of Tabernacles), always began on Wednesday, actually at evening the day before as the Jews began days at evening not midnight (Simon 1967:73). Trumpets, Tabernacles, and the Great Day always occurred in the seventh month as set forth in the Law of Moses (Leviticus 23:24-44). The Essene observance of the Passover was always on a Tuesday evening.

David Flusser suggests that the Essene calendar differed significantly from that of the priests in order for the Essenes to distance themselves from the Jerusalem establishment. He wrote:

    The use of their own calendar was the most particular way in which members of the sect differentiated themselves from the rest of Israel. They celebrated their festivals on different dates, with the deliberate intention of differentiating themselves from the other Jews. This is a phenomenon typical of many sects throughout the world. Even among the Jews, the Samaritan calendar is different from the Karaite one, and both differ from the common Jewish one. The calendar of the Sages, of the whole House of Israel, was different from the Essene one not only in the dating of the festivals, but in its whole conception of the year. The Essenes had a sophisticated solar calendar, in which there were fifty two weeks, and the festivals always began on the same day of the week. In this they were different from other Jews, who lived by a lunar calendar. (Flusser 1989:43.)

The Essene Solar Calendar
^{Dates in bold indicate weekly and annual Sabbaths while Roman
numerals indicate the month beginning with Nisan the first month.}

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