Prayer From Alexander To Constantine

A Critical Anthology

Mark Kiley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781317798910
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

Prayer From Alexander To Constantine presents a diverse selection of prayer chosen by over 40 different historians, all specialists in their respective areas of Graeco-Roman literature. This collaboration gives the book a range and depth that no individual author could hope to rival.
Each selection includes an introductory essay, followed by a new English translation of the prayer, accompanied by critical notes and biography. In this way the reader is able to gain an insight into the variety of subjects and styles involved in people's communications with their gods in antiquity.
The volume will be a key text for students engaged in courses which explore the period's history and theologies. There is no comparable anthology available in English. The volume will also be of value to the general reader interested in the history of this period and anyone interested in the forms of prayer.

Part I

Judaica

1

An Introduction to Prayer at Qumran

Esther G. Chazon and Moshe J. Bernstein

The Qumran writings, more popularly known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, have, over the past half century, considerably expanded our knowledge of Jewish life and literature during the Second Temple era. The story of the initial discovery of Cave 1 in 1947 and the subsequent discovery of ten more caves containing written documents has frequently been told (see Bibliography). This trove of scrolls covers the gamut of ancient Jewish literature, from the Bible to the common Jewish literature of the Second Temple period to the uniquely Qumranic sectarian works. The subset of texts which can be classified as prayer constitutes a daunting quantity of material in its own right.

In addition to about 100 biblical psalms, well over 200 different non-biblical prayers, hymns and psalms can be counted among the 800 manuscripts from the Judaean desert, with some of them appearing in multiple copies. Texts of prayers are found in liturgical and hymnic collections as well as in other types of works such as pseudepigrapha and sectarian rules (see the list below). Qumran gives us the first historical insight into post-biblical Jewish prayer within a live, liturgical, as opposed to literary, context. Prayer played a major role in the religious life of the Qumran community (c. 150–100 BCE to 68 CE), especially in the light of the cultic and spiritual void created by the sect’s apparent secession from the Jerusalem Temple. It provided an alternative means of worship as well as an instrument for the atonement of sin. The sectarian documents regularly refer to prayer in sacrificial terms, equating it with sacrifice metaphorically as well as functionally: ‘An offering of the lips for judgement is like the sweet fragrance [offered by] the righteous’ (1QS 9:5; cf. 11QPs^a 18:7–8 [= Syriac Psalm 154], ‘a person who glorifies the Most High is approved as one offering a meal-offering, as one sacrificing he-goats and cattle’).¹

The development of prayer at Qumran as a substitute for sacrifice appears analogous to the similar process which took place later within rabbinic Judaism in the wake of the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE. The Qumran sect, like the Rabbis after them, apparently instituted communal prayer at fixed times which were coordinated with the hours of sacrifice at the Jerusalem Temple (twice daily, early morning and late afternoon towards sunset and on Sabbaths and holidays; see Chapter 6, ‘Hymn on Occasions for Prayer’, Chapter 4, ‘Words of the Luminaries’, and Chapter 5, the ‘Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice’). There are also parallels in content between certain prayers from Qumran and rabbinic prayer. The ‘Daily Prayers’ of 4Q503 and the rabbinic ‘Benediction on the Luminaries’ (b. Ber. 11a–12a) both offer praise twice a day, evening and morning, for the creation and daily renewal of the heavenly lights. Both incorporate a description of praise offered by and in unison with the angels, known in later Jewish liturgy as Qedušat Yọser. The common presence of this theme may indicate that it was not necessarily Qumranic or rabbinic but was shared by the ‘common Judaism’ of the Second Temple era.²

The regular, fixed liturgy of the community, however central to sectarian religious life, constituted just one of the many facets of prayer at Qumran. Prayer’s function as a substitute for Temple worship and as the operative medium for contact with God led to the amassing of a large and rich corpus of liturgical and hymnic material by the Qumran group. The presence of biblical psalms in the corpus demonstrates that not all of the prayers found at Qumran were authored by the sect, and it is likely that many of the extra-biblical prayers which the Qumran sectarians copied and used were also not written by them. A text’s Qumranic origin is generally demonstrable only if it exhibits distinctively sectarian terminology, contents and ideas (for example, ‘community of God’, cosmic dualism, predestination). The distinction between sectarian and non-sectarian works is crucial for understanding the Qumran phenomenon as well as other contemporary Jewish groups and their practices.

At the present stage of publication and research, the psalms, hymns and prayers from Qumran can be classified according to seven major form-critical categories:

1 Liturgies for fixed prayer times: evening and morning benedictions for each day of one month (4Q503 cf. 4Q408), prayers for the days of the week (4Q504–506), a cycle of thirteen Sabbath songs for the first quarter of the year (‘Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice’), an annual festival liturgy (1Q34–34bis; 4Q507–509; cf. 4Q409, a hymn calling for praise on festivals). The corpus includes other communal prayers whose time of recitation is not explicitly stated (for example, the communal confession of 4Q393 and the lament of 4Q501).

2 Ceremonial liturgies: purification rituals (4Q512); liturgies of benediction and malediction for the annual covenant renewal ceremony and other occasions (1QS 1:16–2:26; 4QBerakot; the expulsion ceremony in 4QD^a); marriage (or golden age) ritual (4Q502).

3 Eschatological prayers: prayers anticipating or requesting messianic redemption such as the Apostrophe to Zion, as well as prayers and hymns to be recited at the ‘end of days’ – during the final war against the forces of darkness (1QM 13:1–14:15; cf. 4QM) and at eschatological blessing ceremonies (lQSb, 11QBeraka; cf. 4Q285).

4 Magical incantations: a ritual, consisting of Ps 91 and apocryphal psalms, which employs incantation, adjuration and curse formulae (11QapPs^a); hymns ‘to frighten and terrify’ evil spirits (4Q510–511; cf. 4Q444 and 8Q5); an incantation against demons (4Q560).

5 Collections of psalms: more than thirty biblical scrolls; a collection of non-biblical Barki Nafshi hymns (4Q435–439); a diverse collection of non-canonical psalms (4Q380–381); and several collections which juxtapose biblical and non-biblical psalms such as the large Psalms Scroll from Cave 11 (11QPs^a) which has been claimed by some to be a liturgical collection (cf. 11QPs^b, 4QPs^f).

6 Hodayot hymns: individual thanksgiving hymns, often opening with the formula, ‘I thank you, Lord’, characterize the Hodayot collections from Caves 1 and 4. Community hymns also appear in some of the manuscripts (lQH^a; 4QH^a,b). It appears that different collections of Hodayot texts circulated at Qumran. These hymns are distinctively sectarian in content and language.

7 Embedded prose prayers: several prayers found in pseudepigraphical works preserved at Qumran, such as the prayers of Abraham (1QapGen), Levi (4QTLeviar^b) and Joseph (4Q372), bear a resemblance to prayers in actual use. For pseudepigrapha in the Qumran library which were already known from existing sources see also Chapter 8 on Tobit and Chapter 10 on Jubilees in this volume.

The list provided above is a descriptive summary. Obviously, an exhaustive account of the hundreds of prayers from Qumran cannot be provided in this brief introduction. This corpus will undoubtedly expand, and categorizations and classifications will change as new editions of scrolls are published and as currently known manuscripts are re-evaluated in light of the new publications. For example, there now seems to be a sub-category of wisdom psalms and prayers (for example, Psalm 154 in 11QPs^a and 4Q409).

The prayers presented below have been arranged along a spectrum moving from the most ‘biblical’ in nature to the most ‘Qumranic’. They include two liturgies for fixed prayer times (‘Words of the Luminaries’ and ‘Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice’), and two representatives of the hymn collections (the Barki Nafshi thanksgiving and the Apostrophe to Zion). The Apostrophe to Zion also serves as an example of eschatological prayers although it does not reflect the sect’s unique developments in this area. The entry from the personal hymn appended to the Community Rule (1QS 10:8b—17) beautifully expresses the religious stance of its author, and is also an important witness for the sectarian concept of prayer.

Notes

1 Texts from the Judaean desert (including, but not limited to, the Qumran scrolls) are identified by a siglum indicating location, in this case Caves 1 and 11, respectively, from Qumran, and either a document number or an official title, in this case Serekh ha-Yahad, one of the ‘complete’ scrolls discovered initially in Cave 1 in 1947, usually referred to as the ‘Community Rule’ or the ‘Manual of Discipline’, and the Psalms Scroll’ which is discussed below. For lists of texts and sigla, see J.A. Fitzmyer, SJ, The Dead Sea Scrolls: Major Publications and Tools for Study, revised edition, SBLRBS 20, Atlanta, Scholars, 1990 and ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Associate Editors
• Contents
• Contributors
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• General Introduction
• Part I Judaica
• Part II Greeks and Romans
• Part III Christ Traditions
• Glossary
• Index