The Community Rule is a sectarian work, crucial for understanding the Community's way of life. It deals with such subjects as the admission of new members, conduct at communal meals, and even theological doctrines (such as the belief in cosmic dualism and in predestination). The picture that emerges from the scroll is one of a communal, ascetic life governed by rigorous rules, which transformed the members of the Community into "priests in spirit," who lived sacred lives in a "spiritual temple." The Community members patterned their daily lives in symbolic imitation of the lives of the priests serving in the Temple by praying and performing ritual ablutions, thereby acting in blatant opposition to the "defiled" physical Temple in Jerusalem.