The Temple Scroll

Transcript (PDF)

Dead Sea Scrolls
Presentation 9 of 15

Temple Scroll
Presented by Roger Weir
Tuesday, May 30, 1989

Transcript:

Frankly the kindly excellence of the spiritless was beautiful. Very nice.

Trying to be over all of **inaudible word or two** difficulties **inaudible few words**

Everything is going to dissolve. Everything is going to dissolve now.

Dissolve or resolve?

Dissolve. it has to dissolve before something new comes. Solvia at Caligula.

Is that Latin?

Yes.

**inaudible comment from the room**

Friends. Friends. You'll be alright. I assure you.

I've given you a xerox, a copy, of the plan of the temple from the Scroll, The Temple Scroll. And you can see that we have on the left-hand side a bird's-eye view of the entire plan. Now you can see that the dimensions of the whole grounds extend on the farthest square 1,700 qubits, which is an enormous area. And then it goes down to a gateway. One of, if you count there are sixteen gateways here through the outer wall. And then one comes in through the grounds to the temple. And you have on the right-hand side the elevation from the outside and from the inside of the exterior wall of this center mandala like structure within the grounds. This is the overall plan of the temple.

But there are correlations which must be understood. And the correlations set the temple as a target within the landscape of the Holy Land. And I'm going to give you a list from a study that just came out a couple of years ago from Sheffield England on The Temple Scroll by Johan Mayer. This is The Journal for the Study of Old Testament supplement series number 34. And he has a beautiful way of succinctly putting the temple into its context. Its widest context is that it occurs in the Holy Land. Now this is not allegorical nor metaphorical. It occurs in what is today Israel. In the Holy Land. within the Holy Land itself, however large its extent is, there is a smaller dimension. And the smaller dimension is a three-day radius from the center where the temple is. So that as soon as one got within three days of the temple you were already at the first transformation. The temple is a magnetic psychic location and its widest range would be the Holy Land. But its first contact with you, in the sense of like a tractor beam, is three days out.

And as you came in towards the temple, the next zone, the next threshold, would be three ris, r-i-s of the temple. A ris is a Persian measurement. And three ris is about four miles, four English miles. So, when you got with within that distance of the temple, you were already then within a new attenuated energy field. now this is interesting because Bethlehem is outside of this three ris. Bethlehem is, is a little over five miles away. And so, it's not quite within this.

Then came the holy city, Jerusalem. Whatever the bounds of the holy city of Jerusalem. And I don't know what kind of images you have. Jerusalem was not that big in terms of population, but it was big in terms of fanfare. I guess a modern correlate would be like the kind of advertising that occurs for Reno Nevada. The biggest little city in the world. Jerusalem was like that. It was the biggest little city in the world. There were some spots where the walls of Jerusalem were as high as a 12-story building. 125 feet high. And there were some spots where you know with the undulation of the land it was only about 60 feet high. So, it was small, but it was packed. And it was conspicuous. And, and it was not only dramatic was melodramatic.

So that for instance, later on when these images became symbolic and thus had an archetypal quality, the, the classic medieval vision of the walled city was based on a inner psychic vision of Jerusalem. A classic city with the towers and the pennants and the high walls and all that. That was Jerusalem. They usually weren't many places like that. And if they were, they would built out of visions that were like a archetypal memory of Jerusalem.

Quite distinct from that Alexandra was a cosmopolitan skyline. It's description in the Roman travelers Strabo reads just like one would be looking up the skyline of San Francisco from the San Francisco Bay. The great tower Faros was 40 stories high. There were buildings some 25 stories high all along the waterfront of Alexandria. It was a cosmopolitan metropolitan city. Jerusalem was not. Jerusalem was a was a hilltop fortress sanctuary that had this kind of quality.

So that one has now the Holy Land, then a conscious threshold three days out in any direction, three days journey. Then the three ris, the four miles. Then the holy city itself, its walls. Then the Temple Mount within Jerusalem itself. The temple was elevated. not much but it was conspicuous when you are on top of it. You felt like you were up. Jerusalem as a city is up. The city of Jerusalem is some 4,000 feet above Qumran. So, you you're up and then the Temple Mount is like the high-chair on the top deck. It's like that kind of thing.

Then the outer temple court, which was open to all a ritually pure Israelites of both sexes. The, the outer temple court. Then the area for men who are cultically qualified. If you're from the right allege and the right to purification and so forth, you were able to go in. then the priests area forbidden to laymen. Notice now you're coming in towards the center. And as you're coming in toward the center there is a geometricity of implosion. Starts with the Holy land, then three days out, then four miles out, then walls of the city and then so on and so on. And notice that you're packing power as you're coming in. The effects psychically is like that of, of the kind of amulet that the Australian Aborigines would draw with the concentric circles. It's not a visual amulet. It's a audio amulet. If you sound that structure out, it's like a bell that is intense at its ringing and then slowly opens up. Notice here that the temple is like the power stroke. It's the point of contact of God with Earth. Notice the tremendous psychic pressure of that moment. And you can come only just so close. And closer if you're able to stand it. And closer if you're prepared. And, and finally only the high priest could be on the very spot where God touches the earth with his presence. Generally, because one should not talk about God directly, it's given in the form the angel of the presence. But what it means is that God's there.

So, one is the Holy Land. Two the three days journey. Three the four miles out. Four the holy city. Five the Temple mount. six the outer temple court. Seven the area just for men who are, he reads here cultically qualified. It would be ritually prepared and purified is better. Eight the priests area, only priests forbidden to laymen. Nine the outer area for cult worship around the altar. For burnt offerings and the temple building. Ten the inner area for cult worship, the hall of the temple. With incense altar, the showbread table, the candelabrum, that is the menorah. And then eleven the inner most area for cult worship, the Holy of Holies. The place of the presence of God. Only the high priest and only one day out of the year can go into the Holy of Holies. The day of atonement. So, you have a, you have a kind of the imploding geometrically about this.

Now just to remind you about the significance of this. It's like in the letter to the Hebrews, Apolis of Alexandria says Jesus is the man who went into the Holy of Holies in the cosmic sense. and once and for all received God's presence on earth in such a way that it never again would not be here. And he received it in such a way that he radiated out that presence in a geometricity, which we with patience can make a journey toward the center where he is.

So that The Temple Scroll, which we will find was written about 125 B.C., talks about a physical temple which should be built. And a 175 years later the Apolis of Alexandria saying the new temple is here but it's a mystical man. It's a mysterious person. And it isn't a building made of stone. It's a heart of flesh made purified to a mystical clarity. Instead of a heart of stone. No matter how grandly placed. It's a heart of flesh indeed grandly lived.

So, we have with The Temple Scroll then the beginnings of something which later on becomes transfigured from a building to a man and from the man to a way of life. You recognize in this the, the movement towards a more Pythagorean understanding of what the architecture is. The architecture is transformed from the building to the idea about the building. And the idea of the building occurs in a man. And when the man lives his life by that idea that's a building that never perishes. Can never fall. So, The Temple Scroll then begins this.

Now The Temple Scroll was found in 1956. It was the last major scroll found. And its designation is 11 QT. Q for Qumran. T for temple, Temple Scroll. 11 because it was found in cave 11. One of the last because of its numbering. In fact, the last cave found at Qumran. Originally The Temple Scroll was enormous. It had 67 columns. And even though we are missing great gaps and fragments at the beginning, it's still 28 feet long. So, it's enormous.

Vermes in The Dead Sea Scrolls in English tells us on page 129, the sequence of subjects generally follows The Bible. "The sequence of subjects in The Temple Scroll generally follows The Bible. But an obvious effort has been made to systematize, harmonize and reinterpret the laws." So that The Temple Scroll is in fact a new Torah.

Now we need to backtrack just for a second here. Do you recall that the Teacher of Righteousness said that it is time for a new law, a new covenant. He meant by a new law, a new covenant, of going inside. The Jeremiah emendation to the covenantal process, saying that God will not write his laws in stone but will, like the Ten Commandments, but will write them in the hearts and minds of his people. And the Teacher of Righteousness is talking about this interiority. And the Teacher of Righteousness uses as a guide for getting inside, not the five books of the Torah of Moses. But he uses instead the five books of The Psalms of David. He doesn't displace the five books of the Torah of Moses by the five books of The Psalms of David. the Psalms were originally in five books. We've lost that structure and only in recent years has it been re-established and understood. It's not that the Psalms displaced the Torah, but the Psalms are the method by which a new Torah can be made.

How? By meditating on the psalms. By interiorizing the words and the meaning of those psalms. Of letting it settle to the presence of God within. Of letting that presence speak out new psalms and listen to what you say. and from those Clues one can pioneer and find one's way to a new Torah, a new law.

What is the new Torah? That there are only two Commandments. Love thy neighbor as thyself and love the Lord thy God with all thy heart. Then on those, those two legs man can walk in any dimension, in any capacity. If he knows how to bring them, those two, together. The law of love and the law of the secret exchange of selves is all you need. And indeed, it is.

"A great deal of The Temple Scroll bases itself," says Vermes, on. And not only Vermes but Yigael Yadin and a number of people who have written on The Temple Scroll. This is Yadin's book The Temple Scroll The Hidden Law of the Dead Sea Sect. So, we're gonna be using Vermes and Yigael Yadin. And this book on The Temple Scroll by Johan Meyer.

They say, and quite correctly, that most of the theological material, most of the quotations that are rearranged. It's the old statements but rearranged. And in the re-arrangement, they reinterpret it. That they come from Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy but they leave out the most important. The most important is not to be found in Exodus nor Leviticus nor in Deuteronomy. The most important is the comprehensive vision of the new temple. And the vision of the new temple cannot be pieced together, no matter how ingenious you are, from fragments or quotations from Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy. In fact, there is a complete vision of the new temple in The Old Testament. and that vision is in The Book of Ezekiel. And in fact, it closes out The Book of Ezekiel. The last eight chapters, chapters 40 to 48 in Ezekiel, are his vision of the new temple. And most certainly The Temple Scroll from the Dead Sea sect is related intimately to Ezekiel's vision of the temple.

Now if you get interested, for yourself, there's a very nice little commentary. The Cambridge Bible Commentary The Book of Izzi…of the Prophet Ezekiel. And you can read through the material. It's a very nice little presentation of it.

If you get into a more scholarly mode, the best study, in fact the only study yet done about this material was published by the Harvard University Semitic Museum in 1976. It's the only study in any language ever done on this. The Theology of the Program of Restoration of Ezekiel Chapters 40 to 48 John Douglas Levinson. And Levinson very accurately says in here why has no one done this? it seems so obvious. How come? And he says because traditionally no one questions scripture. And the people who question scripture starting about a hundred years ago were Protestant reformers. And they did not want to talk about priests and priestly patterns. And especially temple and temple patterns. Because Protestant mentality doesn't like to talk about those kinds of things. So here he is, the first person in 1976, to have published a complete theology of what the temple in Ezekiel amounted to. And I must tell you that it is a marvelous book. It is a fantastic presentation of just what is going on in here.

He brings out the fact that central to the temple vision is that there must be some figure, some high-powered potent figure, who can occupy that temple. There must be someone who can be the high priest for the ultimate temple. The name, the word for that person is Nasi. N-a-s-i. The very curious thing. N-a-s-I, nasi.

The study points out that the that The Book of Ezekiel sees that there is a messiah who will be the nasi for this temple. But there's a hitch in here. Ezekiel, who was a first-class visionary. One of the world's great visionaries. Saw very clearly that he would be an a-political Messiah. He would not be a king. There would be no politics of King. And there would be no politics of theological priestly hierarchy. Now Ezekiel could only put the vision out. And it wasn't until 1976 that anybody ever puzzled through and was able to appreciate this aspect. So, you can see what a subtle quality there is.

Jesus is a-political. He's a-political in the sense that he's on the other side of the dynamic coin from where politics is. He says whose face is on the coin? Give the coin to the man whose face it is. It belongs to him. in other words, the monetary process, the whole process of valuation by money is extraneous to what he's doing.

So, to the whole priestly hierarchy in terms of a physical plant is extraneous to what he's doing. That was very hard to appreciate then. And it's a hard now.

One of the central problems that is brought out here in this study, is that central in Ezekiel's vision is that the temple is on a mountain. Now it's always been interpreted that the mountain is Zion.
As Zion the mountain of Ezekiel's vision in chapters 40 to 48 is associated with Kingship, both of God and of the human ruler. And ideally the mountain is a paradise at the service of that ruler. But at least in the case of the king of Tyre, in Ezekiel chapter 28, his sins and especially pride made the continuation of such an existence impossible. Ezekiel 40 to 48 tells not of the fall but of the birth of the ideal political state. One in which such sins are structurally precluded.

So, one of the esoteric nuances in Ezekiel's vision is that there is a way to live so that sin does not occur in the first place. It's like, if I can use a colloquial phrase, it's like not incurring Karma because you never do anything that incurs Karma in the first place. So, one has a non-karmic life. Now in terms of any natural life is impossible. One cannot have a non-karmic life. But if one has a non-karmic life that means that life is transformed itself out of the natural into the supernatural. Well this is exactly what Ezekiel saw. That life was going to become supernatural. And in such a way that there is, there's no sin. Not because people don't sin but because they live in such a way that the whole structural possibility of sin just does not occur.

Notice here that the temple exists in that kind of a dimension. Certainly not a dimension of stone on a landscape. But in a spiritual dimension where there is, where sin is structurally precluded from happening. That's where the temple is. but in Ezekiel's vision, because it's so high-powered and because at the time his vision was about 575 B.C. in exile and along the river Chebar in Babylonia. But he saw very clearly that this was it, this was the way that the temple would be.

The Temple Scroll takes that literally. And literally says we're going to build this building on this ground with these exact dimensions and cubits. And this exact number of gates. And these kinds of stones and these kinds of tapestries. In other words, it translates back out of the spiritual vision of Ezekiel into the material world where there are Romans and other people vying for power and so forth. So that The Temple Scroll is a regression. It's a throwback. But when you have a throwback like that your imagery is quite different from the from the natural tone. The natural tone would be mythic imagery. But when you have a regression and you go back to the mythic level it isn't mythic imagery then. It's what we would call today psychologically fantasia. And if you believe in fantasia that's what's called delusion.
This is packing it in, I realize. And drawing some sharp lines and redlining a lot of human experience. But this is exactly what happened. it became a compulsion so highly charged but irresolvable because the true dynamic expression of it was precluded by the retrograde motion. in other words, no real expression of it could ever come out because one was in a retrograde motion. So only the compulsory fantasia of getting the temple built again. And it carries all the way through to 1989. The problems that Israel has now are exactly these problems. It's our land and we're gonna make our temple in our way. And it has been inappropriate for at least 2,200 years. And if one is very subtle about it then inappropriate since the time of Ezekiel. It just never since then has been appropriate.

In other words, it it's not that this is wrong, it's that it's mode is regressive. And even if one could realize it, it still would be an expression of a regressive mode. For instance, while once before a thousand years ago, the whole exact dimensions of the State of Israel that now is the State of Israel were forced into existence by the Crusades. And as long as the Lords of Europe kept forcing the issue. And kept the knights and soldiers there and mercenaries they could sustain. And as they got tired over the decades and so forth in the centuries, the land went back to its natural expression. It became Palestine again. the Crusader Kingdom of Akkra is exactly the same shape and size and everything of the present-day Israel. Exactly the same. It's a delusion. And it has nothing to do with quote political realities or with historical viability. Whether it can be done or not is not a question of a reality. But simply of can you believe in this compulsion enough to force it. So, it's a, it's a very peculiar thing.

The Temple Scroll from The Dead Sea Scrolls is the first indication that within the Qumran community there's a split, a radical split. There are those who have understood Ezekiel and understood the Teacher of Righteousness and are moving towards an interiorization which is quiet. And of course, at the first, nothing comes out. All that's there is, is the lonely quiet of, of the of your own space that you've made. nothing is there. Nothing. And it takes a long time to hang in there. As Wallis Stephen says in one of his poems, "One has to have been cold a long time before you can see in the glare of the ice the jagged shapes of the trees. And the echoing sound and the empty land with the sound of the breather of the looker."

If you're impatient. If you don't let that space mature. If you don't let that presence learn to boil off its loneliness. Boil off that kind of isolated alienated exclusion. And it's a characteristic of it, it always happens. If you champ at the bit. if you don't allow it to mature. The sense is, is that you try to feed it to help it along. And what you feed it are images. And the images become entrancing. and it's like one falls into the mirror. One falls into the images which you introduced into the expectation and the mode becomes regressive. The falling into the mirror is the exact psychic symbol of regression. One falls in love with the images that one is projected out. The mirror is the mind. And that is what introduces the whole compulsory movement.

And the, The Temple Scroll is a classic case in point of just this kind of activity within the Qumran community. Notice that by 125 B.C. already John the Baptist became the head of the Dead Sea community somewhere probably around 25 A.D. So, 150 years before John the Baptist, already there was this regressive expression in place in the Qumran community. So, it had, it had a divisiveness. It had its mystics and then it had its militant martyrs. This is from the militant martyrs.

The Vermes. Quoting from Vermes, the aim of the redactor or whoever wrote this. "The aim of the redactor is to present the message of the scroll not as an interpretation of the Bible but as an immediate divine revelation." Now it's not just a simple thing of covering your ground by saying well God's saying this. It's sincerely believing because one has no longer the capacity to differentiate. And to distinguish. It's believing that God has indeed said this through you. Not being able to differentiate. So, that The Temple Scroll is written almost exclusively in first person as if God is saying this. it's further along than, well God tells me to say this. It's that you don't even bother to mention the me anymore. You just speak as if you were God. And of course, this is always a delusion. in every case this is a delusion.

So that's not an interpretation. Notice that there's no Hermeneia. The Temple Scroll by its process eliminates the whole phase the whole methodology of Hermeneia. Of interpretation. Of creative memory. And becomes magnetized, almost electrocuted, by imagination. There's no balance of memory. And because there's no balance of memory no Hermeneia, you know we cling to the imagery and it structures your imagination but that gets fed into a short circuit. And more and more only the imagination works. And that's why it's a delusion. And there's no way to break out of it in terms of any images or any use of the imagination whatsoever. Any use of the imagination just plays into that short circuit. No matter what images one introduces their grisp for that mill, the only way out of that is to stop the short circuit by silence. If you can get someone to be silent and let the silence penetrate. The silence has to go inside. They have turned the radio in the mind off. And that's the turning point in the therapy. In the therapy is to turn that inner voice off. And then of course to sustain them in some way when they have the cold shivers of psychic loneliness and alienation because they, they feel that they're cut off from everything. I don't have, I don't have any voice. I don't have the blast of the certainty of the marvelous compulsive energy. See it's gone. It's like cold turkey. It's like an addiction needing it and there's nothing there. That's the dark night of the soul. One has to go through that by accepting it. It's the only way to go through it. It's not a tunnel or anything. It just, it's basic acceptance all right. It just that, this is how it is indeed.

Bertrand Russell in one of his beautiful moments one time said a man, or woman, has to be able to look at life and see that it is really dirty. Really crazy. Really stupid. And fearful. And let it sink in. And for a long while and only after then can you learn to be human again. And start to enjoy life again. And value people again, including yourself. You just have to go through it. It's like an hourglass experience, you have to go through that hiatus.

"So, the aim of the redactor," writes Geza Vermes, "is to present the message of the scroll. Not as an interpretation of the Bible but as an immediate divine revelation." This is further revelation. what is the revelation? This is a new Torah where the temple is going to be the, the center of this. The actual physical temple.

Notice that this is a revelation from without thrust upon the uncreated imaginative figure. Not the personal self. The I here is always Yahweh. The I is never me or never a person. It's always the Lord Yahweh. So that this is revelation from without thrust upon the imagination.

Now it would seem, I'm not too sure about this, but it would seem that The Book of Revelation is in this trajectory as they say now. That is The Book of Revelation the, the apocalypse also has a compulsory quality that links it to the tradition of The Temple Scroll. I'm not sure but it seems at this point that that may well be the case.

There's a strong relation between The Damascus Rule and the temple scroll. A lot of the correlations are over sexuality. The limiting of sexuality. There is to be no royal polygamy. There's to be no uncle niece marriage. There's to be no marital relations in the city of the sanctuary and so forth. All of this is not talking about marriage. Its talking about purity. Talking about contamination. What is contaminated? The blood. The whole image base around it is the purity of the blood.

Now notice that the Teacher of Righteousness would talk about the purity of the spirit. It's the, it's the purity of the spirit that's important. The blood is ultimately extraneous. But in the regressive mode, the blood is the thing that purifies the altar. What do you do when you slit the throat of the goat? You sprinkle the goat's blood on the altar and that purifies the altar.

Notice that the spiritual dynamics says a bloodless altar of the heart, whereas The Temple Scroll is in ultimate detail of trying to enforce a purity by blood exclusiveness. Only pure animals. Only pure relationships. And finally, the purity can only be an ultimate of single-person. In other words, the, the purity is like a pyramid of purification compulsion. And at the top of the pyramid there's one person who is the master scapegoat of the universe who's going to purify the blood situation for once and for all with his blood. Notice that that viewpoint misses entirely the perfection of the Spirit through the Hermeneia of language. It misses the whole point. The fact that Jesus has been put into the point of that bloody pyramid, theologically, is, is one of the, is one of the resistances holding the psyche back from being able to be free. And go beyond the moon. We're not gonna go anywhere until that's resolved.

There is in fact, in The Temple Scroll, the location is column 64 line 6 through 13, an early reference to crucifixion. It may be one of the earliest references to crucifixion anywhere in Jewish literature. The only other early place where it's mentioned is in another Dead Sea Scroll: The Commentary on the Prophet Nahum. N-a-h-u-m. Nahum. And in Nahum and in The Temple Scroll, there is a pointed reference to the fact that crucifixion is not an Israeli custom at all. It has nothing to do with the Jewish people at all. That it is a scandal. It's a, it's a torture forum that what isn't was a scandal to Jews.

Now the first historical use of crucifixion was during the time of Alexander Geneious, who was the Emperor Jewish Emperor from about 106 to about 79 A.D. And late in his reign, somewhere around 80 to 85 B.C., he had 800 people crucified in, in Palestine. And it was the first time in Jewish history that anyone was crucified by Jews. The penalty, the hanging of someone alive on wood, was specifically a penalty for traitors. Traitors to the Jewish state. It was considered an ignoble death for them. A scandalous death. And it was a death not of apostasy of faith but of apostasy to the political expression, which is linked to the faith. So that one is a traitor to the Jewish state they, the, it crucifixion became the penalty for that single crime. The crucifixion of Jesus is a very poignant condemnation of him on political grounds. The fact that he….

END OF SIDE ONE

…nation.

This is extremely poignant material. I'll talk about more of it on the 4th of July, but I want to give you just this now. The notes for this are from several sources. But the essential person who, who thought this through, not to its of shattering conclusion but in a scholarly way prepared the ground was the Frenchman A Dupont Sommer, The Essene Writings from Qumran. And it's this, his translation of the of the Nahum material the, The Temple Scroll was not published at the time that DuPont Sommers book came out. It hadn't been, it has been just found but had not been translated or published at all. So, it's not in there. But the commentary to Nahum is. And the reason why it's important here is the dead, The Dead Sea Scroll The Temple Scroll also has the point about crucifixion.

In biblical law, by contrast, only the dead body of the executed criminal is to be hanged. That is displayed in public as an example. It's a part of Jewish law. The place in The Old Testament is Deuteronomy 21:21. The Jewish law is that only the dead body is to be displayed in in public as an example. To display a live body is a horrendous breach of the Torah. But if you're making a new Torah and you have special compulsive categories of really bad people like traitors, then you have to have torture like hanging them live on the **inaudible word** public crucifixion. They came in in the time of Alexander Genious and was a rarity until Jesus. The crucifixion of Jesus was a rarity. It was it; it was like an odd thing.

So that Dupont Sommer notes that in the manuscript, in the fragments. We only have fragments of the commentary Nahum. In the fragments there is a peculiar word at the end of the fragment talking about crucifixion. And the way that he translates this word. It's the Hebrew letter for R with an apostrophe after it. with an indication that there was a Y and a Q before the R. if this is so the R, which has a quality it would translate in English the vowel all. If the Y and the Q are indeed part of that word, Y Q R apostrophe, then the full meaning of that word is they will call on him. And what that word refers to is that in the fo, the rest of the fragment that we have that there was in the Dead Sea community a peculiar tone that though crucifixion is a rare torture forced on some people there is one person who has been crucified who is the exact opposite of that. Whose crucifixion has become the point of prayer. But the crucified person has become an object of prayer. That he turns inside out the shame of the crucifixion. So, the shame is on those who crucified, not him. It's in the past tense friends. It's in the past tense. It's not looking towards the future.

Here's how Dupont Sommer puts it together about 25-30 years ago.
Crucifixion was contrary to the customers, customs of Israel. Now this short phrase is rather enigmatic one word which must be a verb has partly disappeared at the end. It is probably Y Q R; they will call on him. If the word is completed in this way, the phrase refers to someone who suffered punishment on the cross and became an object of invocation. Who can this extraordinary person be?

I think that extraordinary person was the Teacher of Righteousness. I think in fact that the first crucifixion was not Alexander Geneious crucifying 800 traitors. I think the Teacher of Righteousness was crucified. And because he was the first to be crucified in this way, I think the scandal redounded against those who had done it and not against him.

Now the odd relationship here is that the Teacher of Righteousness said of himself, his whole significance was that he would come back. Not that he would come back in the reincarnation thing so much, but that his successor would come back and complete what he had started. That he was the to begin, he was the first part of parenthesis. And that there would be a second part completing the parenthetically later on. And he would be like a father to this this other figure, the coming Messiah. So, the, the a-political messianic person is in terms of the historical development, the son of this father. Jesus' crucifixion is like this, the compliment to that. And the Father forgive them for they know not what they do is a, is a peculiarity. It isn't a, a mythic statement so much about a theological happenstance. It's like an accurate closing out of that whole era. That whole 200-year era where the attempt was made to interiorize the experience of God from that. It's not in the building, it's in you. And if it isn't in you it doesn't matter what kind of buildings you have. And if it is in you, it's a movable feast. It can be anywhere. Wherever two or three are gathered together in my name I will be there.

Little side light that I think you can see that some of these things mount up very fast.

Now what is peculiar about The Temple Scroll is that it shows us, in this additional Torah, in this additional material, that there is in fact a new a new kind of equality entering into the life of the Jew. For instance, in Jewish festival life the calendar that it was using with a lunar calendar, 354- day calendar. The Essene movement went to a solar calendar, to a 364-day calendar. which organized time in such a way that there were, because you can divide 364 by 7, the festival's always fall on the very same day every year, every year, every year. You have a consistency of time. What they did with the one in the quarter days we don't know. Yadin thinks that once every 24 years they had an inner calendary month or something. No one knows. I don't know. But because every day show on the same date, and because they believe that this was the eternal calendar, they could go back in time and find what was the first day. And the Essenes found, because in Genesis there's no telling about the days until God creates the lights in the sky, which is the 4th day of creation. And the 4th day of creation is a Wednesday. So that the first day was a Wednesday. So, the first day of the year for the Essenes was always a Wednesday. For eternity, it's always a Wednesday. Always.

Notice, notice the certainty which helps you get through the tough times but also has the compulsory edge. Notice that if you're not really doing the interior work in practice, if you start to just lean on the form, the ritual form, you fall in elderly glacially into this compulsory delusion. The only way to not do that is to keep a liveliness inside of oneself.

Now one of the things that makes Jesus extremely difficult to follow is that most of the, most of the people that followed him in Palestine were Essene informed people. And they didn't see the man at all. And the longer that it went on and the less memory there was of the man, the more the stereotypes slid into this kind of a compulsory rigid regressive fantasia mythology. Until after four centuries there was no way on God's earth that anybody could see the man anymore. Except in mystical visions in your cell out in the desert or out in the mountains someplace. But there was no way in human life to see the man anymore. It, it disappeared into the chaos of the world. And we're at the tail end of that cycle. We're at the tail end of that chaos.

Because of the solar year. because of the days following along, the Essenes developed a whole series of festivals that were not there in The Old Testament. The first festival is Passover. And Passover begins a whole cycle of fest overt, festivals. And they occur in 50-day cycles. now in The Old Testament there is only one festival that comes the 50th day after Passover and that's Pentecost. Pentecost is Greek for 50-day. And the Pentecost was associated not with the glossolalia of the, of the speaking in tongues of the disciples. In The Old Testament it's associated with the festival of first fruits. The weaving of the sheaves. The sheaves are the, are the cut of uhh. It's a barley is what it is. The sheaves of barley. and 50 days after Passover, seven Sabbath plus one day, one waves these sheaves as the first fruits. This is the, the basic, the basic core of life. It's not so much that they, they didn't make bread out of wheat. But barley was the, the, the European still call it corn. That's what they mean by that. It's that's the staff of life.

The waving of the sheaves, that festival of first fruits of the barley was the only festival that was there in the normative Judaism. With the Essenes they introduced a whole series of first fruits festivals. There was the fifty days for the waiving of the sheaves for barley after Passover. and that was a Pentecost. and then there was another Pentecost. There was the first fruits of wheat. Then there was another fifty days after that, the first fruits of wine. And then fifty days after that another yet, the first fruits of oil. And then fifty days after that there was a special festival having to do with the wood offerings.

And where the festivals of the first fruits of barley, wheat, wine and oil were one-day festivals the offering of wood was a six-day festival. Each day two of the twelve tribes would offer the wood to the temple. And the wood offering. And at the end of the wood offering was the last day which was also the first day of the new year, Rosh Hashanah. So, Rosh Hashana became imminent when the wood offering six days was ended. So that the Rosh Hashana in a way, the new year, was always like a ritual Sabbath to the wood offering.

What, what is the wood? The wood is, the wood is an energy source. We don't understand anymore. You know, you have to burn wood to for an energy source. It's like our oil today. Like our electricity today. It's an energy source.

So, man offers a six-day gift and on the seventh day God gives him peace. You work for six days and on the seventh day God gives you peace. So that every year would close out with this kind of a cycle. So, you have the, you have Passover. You have the four first fruits festivals, barley, wheat, wine oil. And you have the offering of wood. And then a couple weeks after that you have the great feast of tabernacles. And also, the Essenes kept the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur was also kept by them. So that we have a whole series of festivals.

Notice here that the ritual comportment of the Essenes in The Temple Scroll is that the entire year is structured. All time is structured and occurs exactly the same. Now use your empathy for just a moment and see, if every year is exactly the same. If every festival falls exactly at the same time in the same relation. You have a geometric certainty of where you are exactly at all times. And the fact that as you go through this cycle, remember it went on for several hundred years. Notice that the only other experience from this is something out of time. Notice that your whole sense, your whole empathy of everything in this world in this time is accounted for with specific compulsive certainty. The only thing other than this would be God. God is the only transcendental quality in a world structured with that kind of strict and repetitive rigidity. So, that God becomes every insight, every flash outside of this world. Outside of this rigidity. He is the only other that occurs.

Now when you get into this kind of self and other polarity, of course, you can see that this is asking for a psychotic break. There's not even a possibility of some kind of neurotic middle ground, where one can become anxious about it. One is absolutely certain up until the minute of the break and then one doesn't know anymore at all.

So that the problem in this was that there was a possibility of losing your faith. of apostasy. But when you lost your faith that wasn't like because of doubts. And it wasn't over a slow period of attrition. It was like you are no longer in the certainty. You're not well no longer in the belief. What happens to such a person? Such a person is complete target for all the subconscious processes to grab you. Literally to be possessed by the whole range of psychosomatic illnesses, of true psychic illnesses and so forth. That happened more and more and more.

And in Jesus's time it was the theraputes who were the cures of this condition. That cured this condition. That cured the soul. How? By breaking through that garbled chaotic response, the center of which is that one was no longer in God's world. Why, why do you have all these symptoms? I'm the leper of the Spirit. I'm not in God's world. I can't I, I don't, I don't live in that. I can't live in that. I don't believe in and I can't be in that. To repose it in them the certainty that God's world is not so small as not to include where they are. something like that. a great deal more powerful and more specific. But reintroducing into them the certainty that God's presence is such that it can never leave you. how can it leave you? How can God's presence not be with you? So, it's a question of your ignorance about it and not that it's not there.

And you can see by the 2nd century A.D. the gnosis, the knowing, that it's there was the, the, the whole development. The way the therapy went. but in Jesus' time it wasn't speculating Gnostically about it, it was doing it. It was putting the, the presence of God back into people by reminding them he is there.

One of the qualities in The Dead Sea Scroll, The Temple Scroll and one of the problems is then for interpreters in our time, is this Temple Scroll indeed talking about a physical temple or isn't it all allegorical and talking about a temple at the end of days. And the conclusion that finally seems to be winning its way. And one I, I should think is it is the, the more correct one, is that they meant to build a physical temple. And even though there's some emendations of people today, scholars today, trying to say well this temple will only come at the end of days. You can't build it until Judgment Day and then you can build this temple. But that just underscores the whole alienated irrationality materialistic quality of it already. When Yom Yahweh, when God's day, when Judgment Day comes. If it comes at all in God's way. The materiality is the last thing that one would go back to as an adequate expression.

So that it isn't that the temple was meant to be at God's judgement day in a universal sense. But on the day when control is had again politically then we will physically build this temple to exactly these dimensions.

And I'll give you some quotations from The Temple Scroll itself so you can get the, the tone of it. And, and, and see how this works.
He shall slaughter the goat which it's blood with the gold sprinkling bowl. Which is in blank of the young bull which he has and atones through it for all the people of the community. And it's fact the serial offering of its drink offering, he shall cause to rise in smoke and the altar of the burnt offerings. And it's flash and its skin and the contents of its stomach, they shall burn with the young bull. This is the sin offering of the community. He atones through it for all the people at the community so that they will be forgiven. Then he washes the blood of the sin offering from his hands and his feet. And comes to the still living goat and confesses over its head all the iniquities of the Israelites. With all their guilt together. With all their sin. And he lays them on the head of the goat. Then they send it to Aza…Azazel into the desert with a man who is waiting ready. Thus, the goat bears all the iniquities.

I mean it is graphically folks, the scapegoat. this is what they did to Jesus. They made him a scapegoat. But the whole scapegoat drama was irrelevant to the man. it had nothing to do with the man. It is a characteristic of the regressive mentality in a scapegoat material delusion. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the mission of the man.

There's nothing more pagan than the way the church has come down to us. Nothing.

I put a picture of the consecration of priests on the refrigerator. It's a picture taken just a few days ago in Rome. and you can see for yourself. It's still the Roman Empire. But with a compulsive delusory Jewish theology instead of the Roman laws. And that's pretty much the state of the situation.

Why has no one put this material together in this way? Because all of the material that we're developing here, you can see, is really dynamite. It not only pulls the rug out, but it shows that there was no rug in the first place. It's devastating to find that one has wasted to life. But to find that one has wasted civilization is catastrophic.

Now in the in the Prophets. There's a, the minor prophets are all together called The Book of the Twelfth Prophets. In Zechariah. You might look up Zechariah. Zechariah 12 verse 10 to 13 verse 1, "Although crucifixion is a scandal there is one crucified man who will on the contrary become for some an object of prayer." It's in The Old Testament. it's in Zechariah. Zechariah very great, great prophet. Minor only because he isn't like Ezekiel and Jeremiah and Isaiah isn't, he, he didn't do an Opera sized production. But Zechariah is not a second-rate profit at all. And is, his ability to command the language intelligently is, is pretty fine. And it reads in translation. "Although crucifixion is a scandal, there is one crucified man will on the contrary become for some an object of prayer."

Zechariah is not saying this of Jesus. He's saying it of the Teacher of Righteousness. And in resonance later on, two hundred years later, it happens again. Why does it happen again? It happens again because when reality touches time-space, it's like a pool of events like ripples come out from that. And if one is living time in a linear fashion, which ordinary consciousness is limited to, it's like you cross the ripple going in towards the center of the event. Just like approaching the temple, The Temple Scroll. But if you keep on going, if you go through the center, you're still in that pattern if you're alert. If you're conscious you will cross the ripple on the way out the same ripple. It's a way of telling and locating in terms of time-space where the, where the, the touch of the event was. Where the fulcrum was.

It's like in The Book of Daniel there's the vision of the white little haired red eyed man a bronze in the furnace. And the same figure occurs in the beginning of The Book of Revelation. And The Book of Revelation written about 100 A.D. And The Book of Daniel written about 260 A.D. if you add those together 160 and 100 to 60, so 130. 130 from 160 gives you 30 B.C., the center, the fulcrum, of all those events occurred in 30 B.C.

Notice that the fulcrum is not the birth of Jesus. The fulcrum is not the crucifixion of Jesus. Those are like the, those are like the tremendous dynamic expressions of an outward expressing energy. But the fulcrum of the events, of those events, is 30 B.C.

What happens and 30 B.C.? Thereabouts. In 30 B.C. an earthquake hits the Qumran monastic community and splits the baptismal fountain in half, and they abandon it. In 30 B.C. Augustus Caesar finally wins the world which Alexander had dreamed of. And he stands in Alexandria at the tomb of Alexander the Great by himself. Cleopatra having just killed herself. Marc Anthony having just killed himself. And for the first time one man is the master of the whole world as far as he can survey. That's what happens in 30 B.C.

It's that fulcrum. and in terms of that event and its resonances that the whole story has to be seen that in its completeness. The whole life of Jesus is on the dynamic expressive side of that event. of going out after that's occurred. To see the events in terms of his crucifixion, as if that were the center, is to misunderstand history. And to try and force a mythic regressive compulsion onto the psyche. And the psyche if anything is a temporizing accurate pattern. The sudden the, the memory is a true structure of consciousness. Consciousness is historical in its nature. And one gets to the right perspective looking in the right way the pattern clears itself up. Not only in terms of what one can find out and piece together. But one can carry that completed pattern in meditation into the psyche.

And what happens if you do that? If you carry the right pattern, it, the actual pattern into the psyche which is made in affinity to that historical happening, the psyche as a whole rings like a bell. Because you strike the center of it in the center. And it rings just like a bell. That can be done. And that can be given with patience and training to almost anybody that you care to meet. That's how a new age begins. Not with an idea but with the experiences of veracity of one's own nature. And the best argument is not on the page but in your experience of your own self. That can be done.

Well thank you. We'll do a few more

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