Temple and Contemplation brings together for the first ... - ImagoMundi

THE IMAGO TEMPLI IN CONFRONTATION
Israel"—is peculiar to Ezekiel. 137 The image of the high mountain-temple
would thus seem to derive, at Qumran, from the Ezekelian Imago Templi.
The mountain-temple is the symbolic temple constituted by the Community
itself. The dominant note here is entirely spiritual. Qumran will
not become a high mountain some day in the future: it is already a high
mountain in the spiritual sense, a mountain as high as heaven. When a
text says: "Thou [the Community] shalt be as an Angel of the Face for the
glory of Elohim of hosts . . .", this corresponds strictly with the description of
the celestial Temple and of the office of the Angels of the Presence in the
Testament of Levi 3:4—6 (see above). 138 The Imago Templi is no longer a
symbol referring to something beyond itself; it is realized in actuality,
becomes the event itself (becomes, as we said above, not allegorical but
tautegorical). As regards the synchronization of its divine service with the
angelic liturgy, the Community is the place where eschatology is already
and actively realized.
4. The celestial liturgy and realized eschatology. The connection indicated by
this sub-title best illustrates the fundamental orientation of the members
of the Qumran Community. If their entire life is dominated by the Word
of God, it is because they are truly "existential interpreters of the Holy
Scriptures". 139 The features which characterize the life of the Community
derive from its eschatological hermeneutic of the whole of the Old Testament,
and it is this lived hermeneutic which confers on the eschatological
Community a permanent sacred status, an irreducible life-style. The Community
of Qumran lived the eschatological salvation as something already
accomplished "in the present". The Johannine community, as we will see
later, did much the same. This mode of being, it has been said, implies the
fulfilment of "five eschatological acts": resurrection, new creation, communion
with the Angels, final deliverance from the power of death, and
anticipatory ("proleptic") transference to the holy City. 140 This escha-
137 Ibid., pp. 228, 290. Even though it was to Ezekiel that the Qumran Sect owed the
image of the new Temple on a high mountain, this image could equally have been
inspired by other passages in the Old Testament: Isa. 2:2-4, Mic. 4:1-2.
138 Cf. also I Enoch 24:25, the high mountain as an apocalyptic image. Cf. Shozo
Fujita, op. cit., pp. 290—291, the translation and analysis of 1 QSb, 4:25—26.
139 Cf. Otto Betz, The Eschatological Interpretation of the Sinai-Tradition in Qumran
and in the New Testament', in Revue de Qumran, no. 21 (Feb. 1967), pp. 89, 94, 96.
140 Heinz-Wolfgang Kuhn, Enderwartung und gegenwartiges Heil: Untersuchungen zu den
Gemeindeliedern von Qumran (Gottingen, 1966), quoted with comments by David
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THE IMAGO TEMPLI IN CONFRONTATION
tological anticipation was essentially mysterium liturgicum: the hymnology of
Qumran, the experience of being transferred to the heavenly kingdoms
and of singing hymns in the company of the Angels, constituted essentially
a liturgical realization of the Community's eschatological status. The "five
acts" mentioned above were performed "in the present" in the liturgical
congregation. Communion and liturgical companionship with the invisible
Angels are an essential aspect of "realized eschatology": they testify to the
fact that the restoration of Adam as a glorious celestial being among the
other celestial beings is already accomplished. 141
The Qumran Community is not a multitudinary Church; it is "the
Temple", not the chosen people in the ethnic sense of the word, but the
coming together and union of chosen individuals. Like Israel on Mount
Sinai, the members of the Community live in a camp which is Qumran (cf.
Exod. 19:2, 16-17), awaiting the manifestation of God's Glory. Because
the Community is the living sanctuary, and thus the "centre of the earth",
it marks the boundary between the sacred and the profane. It is the
fortress which the sons of Light must defend through incessant combat
against the attacks of the sons of Darkness. 142 This combat is an eschatological
one, and is carried on side by side with the angelic powers, since
all beings of Light are partners in the same struggle. Thus, angelology
governs the life of Qumran: the Angels are present at the council, at the
liturgy, and in the combat. This communion and companionship with the
Angels characterize the Qumran Community-temple and its spirituality.
The highest expression of this spirituality is to be found in an "angelic
liturgy", of which the text, to the great dismay of researchers, has so far at
least come down to us only in a fragmentary and mutilated form.
Nevertheless, a fragment suffices to show how this ceremonial liturgy
re-enacts each time the great moments of Ezekiel's vision of the divine
Chariot (the Merkabah) Ezek., chapters I—10). Even though the word
Merkabah does not appear in these chapters of Ezekiel, they have furnished
the Jewish mystical tradition with its central image of the Throne which is
like a chariot. And G. Scholem has no doubts about the Essene origin of
Edward Aune, The Cultic Setting of Realized Eschatology in Early Christianity (Leiden,
Brill, 1972), pp. 31 IT (abbrev. Cultic Setting).
141 Cf. ibid., pp. 41-42.
142 Cf. Otto Betz, art. cit., pp. 96, 98, 103.
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