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a separate 50th day is not counted. The omission of the count of a 50th day is very significant in the
regard that the inclusion of a 50th day is fully integral in the ultimate definition of a lunar-
based-week.

The latest residents of the Qumran commune appear to not only have lobbied for the omis-
sion of the 50th day (probably so as to achieve an annual calendar of 52 Sabbaths) but they like-
wise advocated the omission of the count of a 50th year from the jubilee cycle. Essentially,
certain of the Dead Sea Scrolls make clear that the (presumed) late Qumran group advocated the
count of only 7-sets of 7-years in each reoccurring jubilee cycle. The desire on the part of resi-
dents at Qumran to fully omit the 50 count stands-out as being most unusual -- especially in the re-
gard that Josephus, the priest-historian of the late Second Temple, in Antiquities of the Jews,
seems to show that the jubilee cycle (as it was originally handed-down by Moses) did contain the
count of a specific 50th year (refer to Book 3, Chapter 12:3). This information of a separately
counted 50th year 'after seven times seven years' is significant because Antiquities largely focuses
upon what must have at one time been the religious practices of the mainstream segment of Jewish
society.

It additionally seems that the Second-Temple was probably counting a specific 50th day in
each pentecontad cycle (as is also evident from the writings of Josephus, and from other early
sources). This practice by Temple priests of including a 50th-day in the pentecontad count is re-
flected in a passage from Antiquities of the Jews -- where it is possibly evident that priests under
the late Second-Temple were still performing a full count of the pentecontad cycle:

"When a week of weeks has passed over after this [ = barley] sacrifice, (which weeks con-
tain forty and nine days,) on the fiftieth day, which is Pentecost, but is called by the He-
brews Asartha, which signifies Pentecost, they bring to God a loaf, made of wheat flour, of
two tenth deals, with leaven; and for sacrifices they bring two lambs; and when they have
only presented them to God, they are made ready for supper for the priests; nor is it permit-
ted to leave any thing of them till the day following. They also slay three bullocks for a
burnt-offering, and two rams; and fourteen lambs, with two kids of the goats, for sins; nor
is there anyone [ = others] of the festivals [ = 50th Day Feasts] but in it [ = the 50th Day]
they offer burnt-offerings; they also allow themselves to rest on every one of them [ = every
other one of the 50th Day Feasts]. Accordingly, the law prescribes in them [ = 50th Day
Feasts] all what kinds they are to sacrifice, and how they are to rest entirely, and must slay
sacrifices, in order to feast upon them... " (Antiquities, Book 3, Chapter 10:6).

The count of the pentecontad was ongoing. The theme of each 50th Day Feast changed
throughout the harvest cycle. The old-store of wheat, or the old-store of grapes, or the old-store of
oil was not legally consumed after a respective 50th-Day Feast in the annual cycle had gone-by.

The Second-Temple's presumed count of a 50th-day cycle can also be derived from the
writings of Philo Judaeus (c. 25 BC - 45 AD):

The seventh day is...for relaxation...Once every seven weeks [a] supreme festival, which
the number 50 has had assigned to it...It...a banquet...of reverence for the holy table of of-
fering in the sacred vestibule of the Temple, to signify...the unleavened bread reserved for

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