Del miqdaš ‘adam de Qumran al templo de luz ismailí (haykal nurani)

Laura Navajas Espinal

doi:10.5209/ilur.53849

Abstract

El objetivo de este artículo es presentar la concepción de templo de Qumrán (templo escatológico y miqdaš ’adam) como un estadio intermedio entre la visión del Templo en la escatología judía y la interiorización ismailí del “templo de luz”, todo ello en el marco de la concepción de templo como Jardín del Edén basada en la “memoria alternativa” (Elior 2014) suministrada por las tradiciones sacerdotales parabíblicas.

Highlights

The purpose of this paper is to present the Qumran conception of temple as an intermediate stage between the understanding of temple in Jewish eschatology and the Ismaili innerness of the “temple of light.”
The concept of miqdaš ’adam in Qumran, a result of historical circumstances and of all the strictures and rules based on a self-understanding of the community as temple, does already present a form of proto-internalization which points to something which, centuries later, Ismailism will understand as an apprehension of archetypes as samples and symbols of internal personal developments and not as external self-existing realities
Before starting the analysis of the different temples which appear in the Dead Sea Scrolls, I think it is fundamental for the understanding of Qumran eschatology to summarize the different versions of the eschatological Temple to be found in the OT books and in other parabiblical literature in relationship with the Garden of Eden

Summary

Introduction

In the Ancient Near East the primeval mountain, considered as axis mundi, was the place seen as temple, bulwark against chaos and source of cosmic order,[3] the religion of Ancient Israel draws from ANE sources and understands the Temple, erected upon Mount Zion, as an entryway into celestial regions. In Ismailism there are seven modalities of reading the Qur’an which have equivalents in the seven angelical degrees which open up as a consequence of the fall of the Third Intelligence into the tenth position, generating the whole pattern of cycles which constitutes Ismaili cosmology.[15] The recovery of these “lost positions” is expressed in terms of ascent through seven degrees of reading or understanding of the sacred text This process is known as ta’wil and its aim is to decode God’s encrypted message, which is nothing but the knowledge of the divinity itself. In Ismailism the angelomorphic process goes one step further when compared to the Qumran community, where the priest was seen as the bearer of divine Glory[16]; the Imam is not just the image of the primeval man, but Deus Revelatus[17] itself These anthropological, angelological, and cosmological conceptions are read through the understanding of priestly hermeneutics, deeply connected to a form of meta-history exemplified in the image of the temple as an intermediate space. The concept of miqdaš ’adam in Qumran, a result of historical circumstances (departure from the Jerusalem Temple) and of all the strictures and rules based on a self-understanding of the community as temple, does already present a form of proto-internalization which points to something which, centuries later, Ismailism will understand as an apprehension of archetypes as samples and symbols of internal personal developments and not as external self-existing realities

Sanctuary and Eden in Second Temple Judaism

Concluding Remark