ABSTRACT
The Mishnaic system of uncleanness is in exquisite stasis, resting upon eternally recurrent natural forces, and, at its essence, is above the realm of historical event and action. Accordingly, the structurally and systemically analogous character of the ideas on uncleanness of the two groups—the Essene community at Qumran and the people who stand at the threshold of the development of Mishnaic law—demand the conclusion that, as for Qumran so for Mishnah, there has been an event or a personality of immense consequence. At the Essene community of Qumran uncleanness serves to exclude and cleanness to include, therefore defining the periphery of the commune. The development of the rules on the uncleanness of menstrual blood, the Zab, and corpse uncleanness is wholly predictable on the basis of what has gone before. The destruction of the Temple cannot be presented as the principal cause of the several important shifts in the Mishnaic system of uncleanness which took place in the Yavnean period.
