language to describe the worship of the community. Central to the community-as-temple argument is the observation that 1QS uses temple imagery metaphorically to refer to the community. This observation is correct … As we shall see, however, a metaphorical reading of the temple imagery does not necessar[il]y lead to the conclusion that the community saw itself as a replacement for the Jerusalem temple. … 1QS nowhere explicitly refers to the Jerusalem temple nor does it discuss the relationship of the community to the temple … If we do not a priori assume that the community’s rejection of the Jerusalem temple and cult underlies this passage, a different metaphorical reading emerges … the community may simply be affirming its priestly status, as chosen by God. The language implies that the level of holiness usually reserved for the priesthood is transferred to the community as a whole … With regard to temple language, our study suggests that the imagery was taken metaphorically and was very rich as a way of articulating the self-understanding of the community, but that it was not taken literally to mean that the community viewed itself as the replacement for the temple in Jerusalem …” (Haber 2008: 107-123)
That is the insight. It is correct on a very basic level. Going beyond Haber, not only is this argument gone for 1QS opposition to the temple, but it is time to recognize that all arguments undergirding that notion are immaterial.
Martin Goodman has argued that if the texts found at Qumran were not influenced anachronistically by later rabbinic and Christian modes of interpretation shaped by the destruction of the temple, but read in terms of their own content and contemporary external information, it would be perceived that the authors of the scrolls were ‘as much committed to the Jerusalem cult as other Jews … It was perfectly possible to interpret the sacrifices symbolically without thereby implying that the sacrifices should not also be carried out in practice, as Philo insisted in his attack on extreme allegorists’ (Goodman 2010: 86).
Goodman and Haber distinguished participation in the temple from the distinct issue of criticism of priests and practices of priests of the temple.
Goodman acknowledged there was criticism of the way the temple was run. Not every party could get its way at the same time on specific points of practice in the temple. But ‘the notion that the Dead Sea sectarians cut themselves off from the Temple would seem to us bizarre if we only had the pagan evidence and archaeology as the background to our understanding of the scrolls … such a reading [of separation] is not required by a simple reading of the texts’ (ibid: 88).
And yet in 1QS there is not even criticism of priests or priestly practices in the temple. There is nothing in 1QS which distinguishes its priests from the ones running the temple.
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It has long been recognized that there seems to be a 490-year chronological scheme, so basic to other Qumran texts, underlying the Damascus Document as well: 390 plus 20 to the rise of the Teacher (CD 1.3-11), 40 for the Teacher, and then a final 40 after the death of the Teacher until the new age (CD 19.35-20.1; 20.13-15), giving 490 in total (e.g. Collins 2010: 92-94). This 490-year scheme (390 + 20 + 40 + 40 = 490), every element of which is attested in the Damascus Document except for the third one (the forty of the Teacher’s career which is reconstructed), is based on the famous ‘seventy weeks’/490-year prophecy found in Daniel 9, which was so pivotal to ancient calculations of the end of the age and the expected eschatological culmination.
The first number, the 390 years, is described in CD 1.5-8 as being the period from when God ‘delivered them into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon’ to when God ‘visited them and caused to sprout from Israel and from Aaron a plant root, in order to possess his land and to become fat with the good things of his soil’. It is widely acknowledged that this number, the 390 years, is of no historical usefulness since there is no reason to suppose