396 Daniel C. Timmer understanding this aspect of the sect’s beliefs (21). With respect to the OT, the community’s use of the PB to curse all those outside its carefully-drawn boundaries, even though they were members of the same covenants made with Abraham and at Sinai, is a daring innovation, and the contrast between the two groups is heightened since the Qumranites bless themselves with nearly the same words (22). This reconfiguration of the covenants with Abraham and Israel is a consequence of the sect’s understanding that they alone were the community with whom God had, in their day, renewed his covenant. This exceptionally dualistic posture corresponds to the group’s apparent lack of interest in those outside once it had severed its links to its Enochic- Essene matrix. Furthermore, the prominence of the curse and the dualistic categories of election and salvation that it uses suggests that the various halakhic and sociological differences between the sect and the rest of Second Temple Judaism are partially eclipsed by the group’s summary consigning of their fellow Israelites to “the gloom of everlasting fire” and denying any hope that God would “be merciful” when they entreat him especially because of their non- election (1QS 2,8). Despite occasional appearances of similar soteriological exclusivism elsewhere in early Judaism, the Qumranites’ thoroughgoing formulation and implementation of such a posture is unique, and confirms that this era witnessed not a monolithic or common Judaism, but Judaisms, some fully bent on establishing themselves as the only legitimate Judaism. Faculté de théologie réformée FAREL Daniel C. TIMMER 2085, rue Bishop Montréal (QC) H3G 2E8, Canada SUMMARY In an attempt to go beyond conventional sociological and anthropological analyses of the religious aspect of the Qumranite sectarian corpus, this article considers the reuse of the Priestly Blessing (PB) of Numbers 6 in the Community Rule (1QS). Comparison of how curses were applied elsewhere in Second Temple Judaism informs reflections on what this imaginative redeployment of the PB tells us of the ideology and self-identity of the Qumran group, highlighting their reconfiguration and exclusive appropriation of the covenants with Israel. (21) The sociological role of language in forging Qumran’s self-identity has been explored recently by C.A. NEWSOM, The Self as Symbolic Space. Constructing Identity and Community at Qumran (STDJ 52; Leiden 2004), R. ARNOLD, The Social Role of Liturgy, and JOKIRANTA, “‘Sectarianism’ of the Qumran ‘Sect’. (22) Given the definition of cursing adopted here, we can exclude from consideration the overlapping but not identical phenomena of the h≥erem, prophetic oracles of judgment, and the like. Curses against the nations are quite rare in the OT; that in Ps 129, for example, targets “all who hate Zion,” a group that includes “not only ‘the wicked’ but also the Israelites who do not fear the Lord (cf. 125:5)”; W. VANGEMEREN, “Psalms”, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary (ed. F. GAEBELEIN) (Grand Rapids, MI 1991) V, 1-880 (799); note also Jdg 5,23; Jer 29,22. All such speech acts should be carefully interpreted in light of the semantic flexibility of labels like “nations”, particularly when similar punishments are threatened or enacted against Israel and Judah. Such labels are not ultimately ethnic but spiritual in their semantics.