The Truth About the Virgin: Sex and Ritual in the Dead Sea Scrolls - Hardcover

Sheres, Ita; Blau, Annie Kohn

 
9780826408167: The Truth About the Virgin: Sex and Ritual in the Dead Sea Scrolls
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0826408168 ISBN 13: 9780826408167
Publisher: Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd., 1997

Synopsis

The community that created the Dead Sea Scrolls remains an enigma. These sectarians - or Sons of Truth as they called themselves. Inhabited an imaginative and secret laden landscape replete with hidden allusions, insider, metaphors, esoteric wisdom and mysteries reserved for the elect.
In The Truth about the Virgin, Ita Sheres and Anne Kohn Blau have come closest to unlocking the scrolls' innermost secrets by brilliantly analyzing two unique rituals performed at Qumran that were meant to overcome "sexual pollution": one, the anointing of a select group of males into a life of "angelic" perfection; the second involving a select group of virgin females who were pledged in an immaculate conception ceremony evocative of the great marriage of the ancient Goddess religion. These rituals are described against a background of revolutionary, apocalyptic ideology that abhorred sexuality, prized virginity, was obsessed with purity and defilement, championed male exclusivity and female subordination, and ultimately created its own solution to the problem of the "first sin" - that is, how to procreate without "pollution." And yet these sectarians who preached strict monotheism echoed some of the more mysterious aspects of the repressed Goddess religion.

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About the Author

Ita Sheres is Professor of English, Comparative Literature, and Judaic Studies at San Diego State University.

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Publisher
Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd.
Publication date
1997
Language
English
ISBN 10 
0826408168
ISBN 13 
9780826408167
Binding
Hardcover
Number of pages
256