著者

市川 裕

出版者

東京大学文学部宗教学研究室

雑誌

東京大学宗教学年報 (ISSN:2896400)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.20, pp.1-14, 2003-03-31

---

Recent studies of the Qumran documents have stimulated new perspectives on ancient Jewish history and Jewish mysticism, through which new light has been shed on the literary activity of the priestly class in the Second Temple period. Priests of this period appear to have had two primary responsibilities: to offer sacrifices and to write sacred scriptures. Numbers and letters were looked upon as divine wisdom, or the "wisdom of the angels," and this divine knowledge was the exclusive preserve of the priests. It is assumed that the ideas and practices of the Temple of Jerusalem and the sacrifices performed therein were dominant in the Jewish religion in the Second Temple period and that religious ideas and movements that emerged at this time were primarily concerned with reflection on and reformation of notions of redemption. In keeping with these assumptions, the fundamental ideas and outlook of the priestly class and its mentality are illuminated in the following investigations, and the extent to which the rabbinic sages were confronted with these deep-rooted issues is also analyzed. First, the structure of legitimation in Jewish society is examined, in which the hereditary Davidic kingship and the hereditary Zadokite high priesthood and the Temple in Jerusalem were basic elements. Second, notions of divine presence at the Holy of Holies in the Temple are discussed, as they were preserved and transmitted from the Biblical traditions through apocalyptic literature in the Second Temple period until the emergence of the Hekhalot-Merkavah literature of the mystical tradition after the Mishnah. Third, the manner in which the social order of Jewish society and the world in general was superimposed upon the spatial sacred order according to the ranks of purity and holiness (centered on the Holy of Holies) is outlined. Finally there is a discussion of the temporal order that had been fixed by a solar calendar of 364 days a year, which was to be neither disturbed nor confused by human observation, which was ultimately replaced by the luno-solar calendar.