David J. Larsen
Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article originally appeared in The Temple: Plates, Patterns, & Patriarchs, edited by Stephen D. Ricks and Jeffrey M. Bradshaw. For more information, go to https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/the-temple-plates-patterns-patriarchs/. For video and audio recording of this conference talk, go to https://interpreterfoundation.org/conferences/2022-temple-on-mount-zion-conference/videos/larsen/.
“This presentation will look at the fact that several compositions found among the Dead Sea Scrolls indicate that the authors saw their community as a “replacement temple” for the “defiled” sanctuary in Jerusalem and that their communal rituals were the “true service” of the temple maintained exclusively by their priests in the wilderness. Various texts considered suggest that this “true” temple service may have included belief in human access to the Divine Council in the celestial temple of God and liturgical communion with angelic beings as they participated together in the heavenly worship. Importantly, the Qumran community appears to have considered this temple-related knowledge to have been “hidden” or “secret” and took various measures to protect and limit access to this sacred information.”
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About the Interpreter Foundation Book Chapter Reprint Series
The purpose of this reprint series is to make individual chapters from books published by The Interpreter Foundation more accessible to readers. Although in some instances the formatting and pagination may have been changed, the content of this chapter, like others in this reprint series, is identical to what appeared in its original book publication. It has not been updated to incorporate research that has appeared subsequently nor to reflect the current practice of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to use the full name of the Church and to avoid terms such as “Mormon” and “LDS.”
