Processual Modality in Qumran ritual: Induction into the Counsel of the "Yachad" in 1QS

A new era of Qumran research is ushering in a methodological interest drawn from ritual studies. The contemporary theory attached to such an approach can be illuminating to the Qumran corpus, but it risks obscuring it, as well, if done without tandem interest in two more fundamental matters: the sectarians’ own views on their ritual and a more nuanced reconstruction of how that ritual was put together. In such light this article builds on previous work and explores one particular cluster of Qumran rituals—those associated with induction into the “counsel of the Yachad,” as found in the Serekh Ha-Yachad. It draws three conclusions, based on (a) a further reconstruction of the components in that process, (b) an exegesis of sectarian views on those components and (c) the heuristic use of Ithamar Gruenwald’s observations on the “internal segmentation” of ritual: namely, (1) that an unarticulated ritual of ablutions is to be inferred into the midst of the induction process; (2) that the efficacy of those ablutions was deemed by the sectarians to depend on the candidate’s prior participation in the covenant entry rite; and (3) that, consequently, the sectarian concept of induction into the counsel of the Yachad involved a “processual mode” occurring between four component ritual events in that process—the covenant entry rite, the ablutions that precede access to tohorah, the access to tohorah, itself, and access to mashqeh.