Familiarity With Torah and Second Temple Sacrificial Regulations and Practices
The Temple Scroll reveals a rather detailed awareness of temple sacrifices right down to precise details about animals and the sacrificial practice. An example of this precision is Column 15, beginning at verse 5:
holocaust of the ram, and the two kidneys and the fat which is on them, the loins and the tail, cut off at the coccyx, and the lobe of the liver, and its offering and its libation, according to the regulation. You shall take up a cake of unleavened bread from the] basket and a cake of oiled bread and a wafer, with the leg of the wave-offering, the right leg.
The Temple Scroll has many similar passages. This particular passage is about the annual consecration of temple priests and is derived from Leviticus 8:16 and Exodus 29:1-18. In passage after passage the writer of the Scroll reveals a familiarity with countless aspects of temple sacrificial offerings, leading one to the conclusion that he had either actually been present (and perhaps an active participant in) sacrifices in the Second Temple, or at the very least had a very thorough awareness of both written (Pentateuch/Torah) and oral sources of information regarding Jewish sacrificial practice. Johann Maier seems to favour the latter when he states:
...since Biblical passages (dealing with festivals and sacrifices) have been woven together, they should not be treated first and foremost as textual witnesses but rather as modified and adapted Biblical material.
Meier claims that "a distinct closeness to the Greek translation (the Septuagint) can at times be detected." A strong priestly influence is obvious in the Scroll, whether it originated in Qumran itself or in Jerusalem.
Read more about this topic: Temple Scroll
Famous quotes containing the words familiarity, temple, sacrificial, regulations and/or practices:
“With a new familiarity and a flesh-creeping “homeliness” entirely of this unreal, materialistic world, where all “sentiment” is coarsely manufactured and advertised in colossal sickly captions, disguised for the sweet tooth of a monstrous baby called “the Public,” the family as it is, broken up on all hands by the agency of feminist and economic propaganda, reconstitutes itself in the image of the state.”
—Percy Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)
“The same indignation that is said to have cleared the temple once will clear it again. The question is not about the weapon, but the spirit in which you use it. No man has appeared in America, as yet, who loved his fellow-man so well, and treated him so tenderly. He lived for him. He took up his life and he laid it down for him.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“If there is a species which is more maltreated than children, then it must be their toys, which they handle in an incredibly off-hand manner.... Toys are thus the end point in that long chain in which all the conditions of despotic high-handedness are in play which enchain beings one to another, from one species to another—cruel divinities to their sacrificial victims, from masters to slaves, from adults to children, and from children to their objects.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“The admission of Oriental immigrants who cannot be amalgamated with our people has been made the subject either of prohibitory clauses in our treaties and statutes or of strict administrative regulations secured by diplomatic negotiations. I sincerely hope that we may continue to minimize the evils likely to arise from such immigration without unnecessary friction and by mutual concessions between self-respecting governments.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“Money made through dishonest practices will not last long.”
—Chinese proverb.