the-bible-and-the-dead-sea-scrolls

246 THE DREAM OF A NEW JERUSALEM AT QUMRAN
Another passage in the same work states:
Its interpretation concerns the congregation of the poor [for them is] the
inheritance of the whole wor[ld.] They will inherit the high mountain of
Israel [and] delight [in his] holy [mou]ntain.… 70
The reference to “the high mountain of Israel” recalls Ezek 20:40,
cited above, in which the temple mount is described in terms of the mythical
mountain of God, the cosmic mountain. In a related oracle, also cited
above, God promises to set his sanctuary among them forevermore (Ezek
37:26–28). As noted earlier, the “J” account of creation and the oracle
against Tyre in Ezekiel imply a similarity between Zion as the garden of
God and the garden of Eden. 71 The “high mountain of Israel” is clearly
associated with Eden in Ezek 28:11–19, the oracle against Tyre. 72 It
seems then that the reference to the “Temple of Adam” in Florilegium 1.6
is evidence that the community expected a definitive, eschatological
temple to be established on Mount Zion by God and to be associated
with or like the garden the Eden. 73
A new Jerusalem and a new temple are also described in another work
discovered near Qumran, the Description of the New Jerusalem. Fragments of
this Aramaic work have been found in Caves 1, 2, 4, 5, and 11. 74 The
work seems to have been inspired by Ezekiel 40–48. The text is in the first
person, narrated by a visionary accompanying an angel who gives him a
guided tour. The tour begins outside the city and apparently proceeds
inside the city and from there to the temple. It progresses to the interior
70. 4QpPsa 3.10–11; trans. from García Martínez, DSS Translated, 204.
71. Levenson, Sinai and Zion, 128–31.
72. Especially Ezek 28:14, 16; for discussion, see Wise, “4QFlorilegium and the
Temple of Adam,” 128–29.
73. Wise’s contention that the “End of Days” (Mymyh tyrx)) refers to the near
future, not to the past or present (“4QFlorilegium and the Temple of Adam,” 115), is
untenable in light of texts made available in the meantime and Steudel’s study
(“Mymyh tyrx) in the Texts from Qumran”). Thus, I agree with Wise that “the
sanctuary which Thy hands have established, O Lord,” which he calls the “Temple
of the Lord,” as mentioned in Florilegium (4Q174) 1.3, is the same temple as the
“Temple of Adam,” mentioned in 1.6; yet I cannot agree that this temple is to be built
by Israel in the first stage of the eschaton, the end of days, and that it will be replaced
by the temple that God will create (so Wise, “4QFlorilegium and the Temple of Adam,”
131). Although Wise identifies the “Temple of the Lord,” which is also the “Temple
of Adam,” with the temple described in the Temple Scroll, a provisional temple, I am
convinced that it is identical with the definitive temple that God will create, as argued
above.
74. Other fragments discovered in Cave 4 (4Q232) may belong to a Hebrew form
of the work; see Jozef T. Milik, The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1976), 59.