Just as the Pharisees and their putative successors developed an alternative to the Temple, offering ‘spiritual sacrifices’ through prayer, fasting and almsgiving, so the group that practised the Community Rule developed a theology in which Israel’s god had called them into being as an alternative Temple. Their devotion was acceptable in the place of that which was still being offered a few miles away, and a few thousand feet higher up, on Mount Zion itself.
