the temple cornerstone (ʾeben ha-shettiya).68 While the temple walls (the Qumran laity) mark out and protect the boundary between the holy and the profane, the cornerstone (the Qumran priesthood) serves as the point at which atonement occurs and creation-threatening forces are contained. The eschatological tenor of the creational and redemptive symbolism is strongly suggested not only by the eschatological orientation of so much of the Qumran corpus, but also, as it so happens in the cited passage,