The Truth about the Virgin
The Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice (Shirot Olat Hassabbat [4QSirSabb]) is a rare written record of a mystery rite surviving from the ancient world. Enough copies were found at Qumran to provide us with an almost complete document. The psalms are organized to lead the participants, initiates, and viewers gradually and hierarchically from the first to the thirteenth Sabbath. The songs (shirot) or psalms, when chanted in unison, must have inspired a feeling of triumph and fulfillment. The first seven or eight psalms present most of the symbols, but the whole Scroll leaves an indelible impression of pageantry and ritual.
In the 9th psalm the worshipper/initiate is brought into the "royal vestibules"; in the 10th he approaches the marvelous veil; in the 11th he views the figures on the brick pedestal of the throne; in the 12th the Merkabah is described, leading finally in the 13th to the climax of the burnt offering.(10)
From "vestibules" to "veil" to "brick pedestal," the images accumulate in a typically sectarian landscape that paid close attention to external matters as sometimes representing the internal.(11)
In this chapter we rely on the careful translation and commentary by Carol Newsom.(12) We agree with many of her sensitive insights, in particular the communal nature of the ritual and its intention to lead the participants toward ecstasy in order to achieve a heavenly communion. But in reading the songs and analyzing all the images they evoke, we come to a more radical conclusion about the function of the initiation mystery -- one we think more befitting Qumranian beliefs.
The Truth about the Virgin
Up to this point, we have considered the historical and social background of Judaism at the turn of the millennium while pointing out the lingering traces of the Goddess in the region's culture. We have delved into the formation of a strong-minded faction, a warrior-priest brotherhood with its center at Qumran; and we have illustrated the obsessive mission of these sectarians to purify the nation in the face of grave threats by Romans to their culture and very existence. In this chapter, we look closely at a text from Qumran that dramatizes how intense ideas were put into action and displayed to the community. We will begin to see what the sectarians' final logic was in their attempts to "solve" the problem of virginity.
In this chapter we will witness a high ritual, one with an intricate mystery related to angels. The setting is illuminated by the "highly descriptive content and the carefully crafted rhetoric [that] direct the worshipper ... toward a particular kind of religious experience, a sense of being in the heavenly sanctuary and in the presence of the angelic priests and worshippers."(13) We pay close attention to the "particular kind of religious experience" that is conveyed by the Shirot. In both tone and mood one can easily detect a sense of urgency and immediacy that account for the length of the description of the initiate, the priests, and the community participating in the gathering. The enormity of the experience is punctuated further by the time of the week (the Sabbath) and the regularity (at least thirteen) of the singing and possibly "sacrificing." These notions of a specific time and place as well as regular action illustrate the almost fanatical sense of order associated with the Qumran sectarians. Not only were they adherents of a nontraditional calendar, but they emphasized repeatedly the importance of doing the right thing at the right time: "He makes the fo[rm]er things [in their seasons (moed; moadim) and the latter things in their due time ...]" (4Q402 4:13-14).(14) What they desired was nothing less than to commune with the angels, who travel back and forth from the stars and who are the saints who live in God's gated court.
To reach this heavenly communion required a "sophisticated manipulation of religious emotion in the songs."(15) There is sometimes a strong sense of presence associated with the description of the angels in the Songs, and at times one can detect a confusion between angels and real (though, holy) people. The relationship between the earthly realm and the heavenly realm is described in terms that are real enough to suggest that the humans discussing the angels totally identify with them. The forceful motivation in Qumran to establish a uniquely holy community might have led the sectarians to a deliberate attempt to envision the heavenly residents as earthly. They may have purposefully created the Shirot as if to witness physically the heavenly entourage and to demonstrate to the congregation that holiness has materialized among them. The vivid, detailed descriptions of the heavenly priests lavishly dressed and their celestial community singing and praising are very real and seem to be analogous to the meticulous sectarians themselves preparing for the right time, the appropriate words, and the applicable emotions. The texts manage thus to generate a certain perception of reality. Even more relevant is the Shirot's literary flow, which enhances the response of the reader and creates a sense of theater. It is as if there is an audience, an assembly, which not only listens to the songs but is also watching the events that unfold on the temple stage.
There are other texts also that articulate a relationship between the holy community gathered at Qumran and the angels in heaven and show the identification beween "holy angels" and the "holy initiates" (e.g., 1QM 4:5-14; 9:15-16; 10:11; 1QS 10:8; 1QH 11:13). A popular notion of the sectarians was the idea of a human, holy community reflecting a heavenly angelic community. In a sense, the discipline, rituals, and way of life undertaken by the Qumranites ideally made it possible for them if not to be transformed into angels then at least to be able to identify fully with the angels' status and mentality.
The idea of an earthly congregation mirroring a heavenly one is a classical, mystical concept that derives from the Biblical view of chosenness.(16) The connection between "holiness" and the Sabbath is strong in biblical literature as well as in the Qumran writings. Therefore, it is no surprise that the Qumran community's reenactment of a heavenly sacrifice, a communion, is on the Sabbath, when the holy spirit is most accessible. This propitious timing allows access to the powers that be, in accordance with the quasi-solar calendar, at heaven's most permeable moment.(17)
But we wish to go one step farther. The dramatic ritual alluded to in the Shirot is not merely a priestly version mirroring a heavenly initiation of angels, or a circumcision of "joiners" or converts, as it has been interpreted.(18) On the contrary, the ritual mainly records the script of those who played the role of angels; furthermore, the words and the actions are presented from the perspective of angels. The angels are described as functioning within a clearly hierarchical order: the highest archangel, the Prince of light, is also the Judge Michael or Melchizedek.(19) The seven archangelic counselors are a larger number of taskmasters, known as elim ("Godlike beings").(20) Below them are the more ordinary angels living in the "camps," which indicates their human form. The initiates, their role being central to this drama, are designated as such by the crescendo of the seventh psalm.(21) Possibly there are the cherubim too who play the role of the babes in training.(22)
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