Rethinking The Community As Temple: Discourse And Spatial Practice In The Community Rule (1qs)
Year: 2015
Type: article
Abstract: This project is a spatial reading of the Community Rule (1QS) that examines how space is used as a response to the perceived defilement of the Jerusalem Temple and how it addresses the problems of atonement and priestly authority for a community without a physical temple. Edward Soja’s concept of Thirdspace—social space transformed by material and mental spaces—illuminates how temple, military, and judicial spaces order social and divine relationships for those who followed 1QS. In turn, this spatial practice creates a new place that enables the community to contest the Jerusalem Temple’s authority while legitimizing its own. While Edward Soja’s notion of Thirdspace guides my understanding of space and place, I flesh out his ideas with Mikhail Bakhtin’s work on discourse and heteroglossia and Pierre Bourdieu’s work on practice and habitus. Together, these three thinkers provide a theoretical framework for reading 1QS and examining how spatial discourse and practice functioned for and informed the identity of its authors.
Author: Melissa P. Pula
Language: English
Subfield: Religious studies
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2226886007