A distinctive feature of the prayer collections found at Qumran is that they have different prayers for each day of the week, month, Sabbath, festival, purification ritual, and so on. In the cases of the Words of the Luminaries and the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, these different prayers construct a liturgical progression over the course of the cycle. I argue that this is to engender a progressive religious experience among the worshipers: over the course of the week towards confident approach to God in preparation for Sabbath, and over the course of Sabbaths in the quarter towards ritual transformation. Moreover, I propose that the Daily Prayers and Festival Prayers may also form an intentional liturgical progression over the cycle. If so, I would also suggest that in the liturgical cycle as a whole, there is in the daily ritual scripted experience of the larger cycles.
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E.g., M. E. F. Bloch, “Symbols, Song, Dance and Features of Articulation: Is Religion an Extreme Form of Traditional Authority?” EuroJSoc 15 (1974): 55–81 (67–71); F. Staal, “The Meaninglessness of Ritual,” Numen 26 (1979): 2–22.
See C. M. Bell, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 72–83; Bloch, “Symbols, Song, Dance,” 77.
A. K. Harkins, Reading with an “I” to the Heavens: Looking at the Qumran Hodayot through the Lens of Visionary Traditions (Ekstasis 3; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012).
E. G. Chazon, “4QDibHam: Liturgy or Literature?” RevQ 15/58 (1992): 447–56 (448–50).
R. A. Werline, “Reflections on Penitential Prayer: Definition and Form,” in Seeking the Favor of God, 2: 209–25 (215).
See D. K. Falk, “Festivals and Holy Days,” in The Eerdmans Dictionary of Early Judaism (ed. J. J. Collins and D. C. Harlow; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2010), 636–45 (638–9). According to Philo, it is also the most important festival for the Therapeutae with special liturgy, but he does not indicate its theological significance for them.
H. Stegemann, “Methods for the Reconstruction of Scrolls from Scattered Fragments,” in Archaeology and History in the Dead Sea Scrolls: The New York University Conference in Memory of Yigael Yadin (ed. L. H. Schiffman; Sheffield: jsot, 1990), 189–220. See Falk, Daily, Sabbath, and Festival Prayers, 64–65 for discussion, and the alternative reconstruction by É. Puech, “Review of Qumrân grotte 4,iii (4Q482–4Q520),” rb 95 (1988): 407–9 (408), according to which Sunday’s prayer would also be only 2 2/3 columns.
R. Noll et al., “Mental Imagery Cultivation as a Cultural Phenomenon: The Role of Visions in Shamanism,” Current Anthropology (1985): 443–61 (444–48); A. Taves, Religious Experience Reconsidered: A Building Block Approach to the Study of Religion and Other Special Things (Princeton, n.j.: Princeton University Press, 2009), 150–56.
Ibid., 156 (see 150–60); referring to B. Newman, “What Did It Mean to Say ‘I Saw’? The Clash between Theory and Practice in Medieval Visionary Culture,” Speculum 80 (2005): 1–43 (28–29).
P. S. Alexander, The Mystical Texts (London: T. & T. Clark, 2006), 52, argues the latter. Contrast C. A. Newsom, “Religious Experience in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Two Case Studies,” in Experientia, Volume 2: Linking Text and Experience (ed. C. Shantz and R. A. Werline; Atlanta, Ga.: sbl, 2012), 205–22 (219). Editions: C. Newsom, djd 11:173-401; F. García Martínez et al., djd 23:259–304.
Ibid., 50.
Ibid., 52.
B. Nitzan, Qumran Prayer and Religious Poetry (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 311.
R. A. Rappaport, Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 228, referring to E. G. d’Aquili, C. D. Laughlin and J. McManus, The Spectrum of Ritual: A Biogenetic Structural Analysis (New York, n.y.: Columbia University Press, 1979), 158; and 227, referring to Victor Turner’s concept of “communitas.”
See D. K. Falk, “Prayer, Liturgy, and War,” in The War Scroll, Violence, War and Peace in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature (ed. K. Davis et al.; Boston: Brill, forthcoming).
See Falk, Daily, Sabbath, and Festival Prayers, 219–26; R. C. D. Arnold, The Social Role of Liturgy in the Religion of the Qumran Community (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 54–81.
R. J. Bauckham, “The Lord’s Day,” in From Sabbath to Lord’s Day: A Biblical, Historical, and Theological Investigation (ed. D. A. Carson; Eugene, Oreg.: Wipf and Stock, 1999), 221–50.
P. G. Cobb, “The History of the Christian Year,” in The Study of the Liturgy (ed. C. Jones et al.; 2d ed.; London: spck, 1992), 455–71.
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A distinctive feature of the prayer collections found at Qumran is that they have different prayers for each day of the week, month, Sabbath, festival, purification ritual, and so on. In the cases of the Words of the Luminaries and the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, these different prayers construct a liturgical progression over the course of the cycle. I argue that this is to engender a progressive religious experience among the worshipers: over the course of the week towards confident approach to God in preparation for Sabbath, and over the course of Sabbaths in the quarter towards ritual transformation. Moreover, I propose that the Daily Prayers and Festival Prayers may also form an intentional liturgical progression over the cycle. If so, I would also suggest that in the liturgical cycle as a whole, there is in the daily ritual scripted experience of the larger cycles.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 332 | 58 | 4 |
Full Text Views | 274 | 5 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 138 | 10 | 0 |