The truth about the Virgin
By: Ita Sheres, Anne Kohn Blau ; foreword by David Noel Freedman.
Contributors: Blau, Anne Kohn.
Publisher: Continuum; Brand: Continuum Intl Pub Group (Sd); Continuum Intl Pub Group
Published: 1995
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 236
Subjects: Dead Sea scrolls.; Qumran community.; Sex role -- Religious aspects -- Judaism.; Virginity -- Religious aspects -- Judaism.; Purity, Ritual -- Judaism.
Other titles: Sex and ritual in the Dead Sea Scrolls
Description: 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.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 221-226) and index.