The new temple and the priestly covenant of the Qurman community

• Grant number: 11/51991-1
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants - Publications - Books published in Brazil
• Start date: March 01, 2012
• End date: August 31, 2013
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - Ancient and Medieval History
• Principal Investigator: Nachman Falbel
• Grantee: Nachman Falbel
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Since its construction in the time of King Salomão, the Jerusalem Temple was the comer stone of the Southern Javismo and, from then on, of the Second Temple Judaism. The so-called 'Temple Thought', based on the rules of pure and impure inside the sacred place and time which governed the priestly life, will expand vigorously in this period due to the growth in importance of the Jerusalem sanctuary inside the post-exile society. At the same time, the high value of the priesthood was in its peak. The high priest was, from the return from the Babylonian exile on, the religious and political head of the Jewish nation. Around the second century B.C., a community founded and leaded by priests, presently known as the Qumran Community, isolated itself from the surrounding society, aiming at following the strict observance of the priestly rules of purity. In its center in the Judean desert, its members produced and kept manuscripts by which they based and constituted their peculiar organization. Today those manuscripts are named "Dead Sea Scrolls". Among them, we can find the Temple Scroll, the Rule of Community and the Damascus Document, sources of community rules. Basing ourselves on these three documents, we elaborated our book by analyzing the discourse produced by the communal leadership, whose goal was the constitution of a society shaped in its radical interpretation of the scriptures and of the world. (AU)