Hodayot

A number of texts from the Qumran scrolls demonstrate the community's interest in heavenly ascent and in communion with angels. This article lays out a pattern observable in some of the poetic/liturgical texts (for example, the Hodayot and other noncanonical psalms) in which the leader of the community is taken up into the divine council of God to be taught the heavenly mysteries, is appointed a teacher of those mysteries, and is then commissioned to share the teachings with his followers. Upon learning the mysteries, the followers are enabled to likewise ascend to heaven to praise God with the angels. In some texts, the human worshippers appear to undergo a transfiguration so that they become like the heavenly beings. This article further illustrates how these elements can be found together in a liturgical text known as the  Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice ; their collective presence suggests that all were part of a ritual sequence. Finally, the article argues that these same el...

This boldly comparative work is a slight revision of Cavin's Durham dissertation, completed in 2010 under Stephen Barton (v). Not only is this one of the few major comparisons of Colossians and 1 Peter, but it is certainly the first to compare those two New Testament texts with two further texts from an ostensibly very different milieu: the Dead Sea Scrolls. Cavin compares " patterns of thought " in 4QInstruction and the Hodayot with Colossians and 1 Peter, respectively, to clarify what is distinct in the two New Testament compositions and to provide a plausible background for their portrayal of the dynamic between theology and behavior (thus " new existence and righteous living ").

This essay seeks to pick up the thread of investigation that was begun by George Nickelsburg almost twenty years ago, namely tracing the mythological inflections within the Hodayot to traditions associated with the antediluvian hero Enoch. Nickelsburg's observation is well noted, that the Hodayot author appears to anthropologize cosmic experiences, seismic tremors, applying them to himself and making them his own bodily experiences. This author argues in favor of understanding the Hodayot's allusions to Enochic traditions as part of a larger strategy designed to bring about a religious experience from reading.

One of the most significant additions to the Book of Genesis in Joseph Smith's inspired translation of the Bible is to the story of the prophet Enoch, who the biblical record briefly implies was taken up into heaven alive. In Joseph Smith's rendering of the story, however, not only Enoch, as an individual, ascends into heaven, but also his entire community. This article explores the notion of communal ascent in ancient Jewish and Christian literature and seeks to find affinities with the story of Enoch's Zion found in the LDS Book of Moses. Ancient narratives such as The History of the Rechabites provide some interesting parallels, however the idea of a group ascending into heaven is more strikingly presented in texts that are arguably designed for ritual purposes, as we see with the biblical Epistle to the Hebrews and the Hodayot and Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice texts from among the Dead Sea Scrolls. We can see in these texts a pattern that entails an individual being taken up into heaven and taught the celestial mysteries, then being appointed to return and teach others so that they can also, as a group, ascend into the heavenly realm.

A prominent feature of both 1QHa 11:6–19 and the book of 4 Ezra is their use of imagery related to pregnancy, labor, and childbirth. In 1QHa 11:6–19, one of the most complex and allusive compositions in the Qumran Hodayot collection, birth imagery is used as one in a series of similes that illustrate the speaker’s situation of crisis. The motif of childbearing appears throughout the book of 4 Ezra, but plays an especially significant role in the central Episode Four (9.26–10.59), in which the new Jerusalem is born from the womb of the earth. Although 1QHa 11:6–19 and 4 Ezra are very different texts in terms of their genre, language, and dates of composition, their common use of birth imagery invites comparative study. Both compositions use the imagery of childbirth to describe a situation of crisis and transformation, and both draw on scriptural texts to construct this imagery. A comparison of the use of birth imagery in 1QHa 11:6–19 and 4 Ezra serves to highlight the creative and distinctive employment of this imagery in each text, especially with regard to three aspects: 1) the use and development of scriptural traditions (especially material from Isaiah and Jeremiah), 2) the perspective of the speaker or protagonist vis-à-vis the pregnant woman, and 3) the shifting referent of the pregnant woman. Given the importance of the childbearing motif in 1QHa 11:6–19 and 4 Ezra, a deeper understanding the significance of this motif provides insight into the larger messages and rhetorical goals of both of these texts.

This essay evaluates a proposal that one comes across in much of the secondary literature on the Hodayot: namely, that the collection of hymns preserved in 1QH/a is comprised of smaller sets or groups that are each demarcated by a למשכיל heading. This proposal is examined in light of the comparative evidence for the arrangement of hymns in the Cave 4 manuscripts, especially 4QH/a (4Q427) and 4QH/e (4Q431). The analysis shows that the proposed למשכיל groups from 1QH/a fail to obtain across the Cave 4 manuscripts, and it is suggested instead that the למשכיל incipits simply served as headings for the particular hymns with which they are paired.

Email author at jpannku@emory.edu for a full PDF of the article.

A number of texts from the scrolls found at Qumran demonstrate the community’s interest in communion with angels and heavenly ascent. This article lays out a pattern observable in some of the poetic/liturgical texts (e.g., the Hodayot and other non-canonical psalms) that involves the leader of the community being taken up into the divine council of God to be taught the heavenly mysteries, being appointed as a teacher of those mysteries, and then sharing the teachings with his followers. Upon learning the mysteries, the followers are enabled to likewise ascend to heaven to praise God with the angels. In some texts, the human worshippers appear to undergo a transfiguration so that they become like the heavenly beings. This article further illustrates how these diverse elements can be found together in a liturgical text known as the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, suggesting that all were to be (or could be) part of a ritual sequence. Finally, the article argues that these same elements, or traditions related to them, can be found in passages from the Old Testament.

Before the Bible: the Liturgical Body and the Formation of Scripture in Early Judaism reveals the landscape of scripture in an era prior to the crystallization of the rabbinic Bible and the canonization of the Christian Bible. Most accounts of the formation of the Hebrew Bible trace the origins of scripture through source critical excavation of the archaeological “tel” of the Bible or the analysis of the scribal hand on manuscripts in text-critical work. But the discoveries in the Dead Sea Scrolls have transformed our understanding of scripture formation. Judith Newman focuses not on the putative origins and closure of the Bible but on the reasons why scriptures remained open, with pluriform growth in the Hellenistic-Roman period.

Drawing on new methods from cognitive neuroscience and the social sciences as well as traditional philological and literary analysis, Before the Bible argues that one key to understanding the formation of scripture is the widespread practice of individual and communal prayer in early Judaism as a means of shaping selves and communities. The figure of the teacher as a learned and pious sage capable of interpreting and embodying the tradition is central to understanding the phenomenon of revelatory discernment. The book considers the entwinement of prayer, mediating figures, and scripture formation in five books reflecting the diversity of early Judaism: Ben Sira, Daniel, Jeremiah/Baruch, Second Corinthians, and the Qumran Hodayot (Thanksgiving Hymns). While not a complete taxonomy of scripture formation, the book illuminates performative dynamics that have been largely ignored as well as the generative role of interpretive traditions in accounts of how the Bible came to be.
Expected publication date: August 1, 2018 by Oxford University Press

In the Epistle to Ephesians we find six occurrences of the term μυστήριον, a rendering of Aramaic רז or רזא. There are several points of view about the unitary use of μυστήριον in Ephesians. In this article I focus on the expression τὸ μυστήριον τοῦτο μέγα ἐστίν (Eph 5:32), which can be more deeply appreciated through a comparison with some occurrences of רזא/רז in the Dead Sea Scrolls (4Q416 2ii 7b-2iv; 1QS 9:18b-19a; 1QS 11:3b-4a; 1QHa 16:6b-12; 1QpHab 7:4-5a; 1Q27 1i 1-8). Though we cannot find a perfect parallel in Second Temple apocalyptic literature, we can identify texts that may have inspired the author of Ephesians. The knowledge and contemplation of mystery show that human relationships are shaped on the relationship between God and mankind, according to God’s eternal plan, as enclosed, for instance, in the רז נהיה of 4QInstruction. Moreover, like the Teacher of Righteousness, the author of Ephesians, too, knows and reveals the mystery of Scriptures and «ancient matters».

Ephesians – Mystery – Qumran scrolls – Apocalyptic literature – Haustafel

This article explores the significance of the posture of full prostration by the maskil that appears uniquely in association with him in the Hodayot.  Using theoretical frameworks from ritual studies and embodied cognition, as well as traditional philological work, I argue that the maskil‘s prostration summons the cultural memory of Moses as chief intercessor.  This embodied technique serves not only to form the self of the leader in relation to the yaḥad, but shapes the community that worships with him in the gathered assembly.

The paper discusses the linguistic history of the Hebrew word מדהבה, which is a hapax legomenon in the Bible (Isa 14:4), but is also documented several times in the Dead Sea scrolls. Since text-critics commonly hold it to result from a scribal mistake (the original reading being מרהבה, as witnessed by 1QIsa-a), its sense and distribution throughout the Second Temple period have eluded explanation thus far, and the exact relation between the two
corpora of Biblical and Qumran Hebrew remains obscure. It is proposed that sound changes peculiar to the Greco-Roman period have facilitated a lexical reanalysis of מדהבה, and that the word was eventually integrated into the
lexicon of Second Temple Hebrew by means of associative etymology, which is a recognized mechanism of semantic change.

The aim of this essay is to make some contribution to the present-future resurrection debate surrounding the Hodayot, using some approaches to metaphorical theory alongside the existing critical discourse on the matter.  Whilst it is not generally accepted that the Dead Sea Scrolls present any ideas of resurrection, some influential critics claim the opposite.  Other influential critics claim that the figurative articulation of a resurrection is communicated, representing the present situation of the community. It will be argued, using some post-structuralist metaphorical theory, that both of these main threads of opinion rely, erroneously, on misassumptions of the processes of metaphorical significations and how they operate in poetic language.  In much discussion on the matter, it is taken for granted that metaphors sign in a very simplistic and predictable way.  However, this paper proposes that the transactional relationship between the metaphorical sign of “eternal heights” is a far more complex poetic process than some critics imagine.  The conjunction of actual resurrection and the “figurative” present experience resurrection is important, not whether one is superior or subordinate to the other, but through their co-existence and co-autonomy.  As a result, it will be shown that both the present-realised and future-salvation situations are being co-signed in the “raising” opening of 1QH 11, which is a piece of artistically ambiguous poetic language.

This essay examines the transmission and redaction of the non-Teacher Hymns collections, those Hodayot that are often referred to monolithically as the Community Hymns. A comparison of the order and arrangement of Community Hymns in 1QHa and in 4Q427 suggests something about the editorial shaping of the Community Hymns. I propose that some moveable compositions, those which have no fixed literary context, are placed in what may be understood as “seams” in the collection. These seams are the “leMaskil” headings that appear throughout 1QHa which are unlike other incipits in the scroll.

This essay offers a proposal for the textual development of 1QH(A). The oldest Cave 4 scroll known as 4Q428 was not an exact replica of 1QH(A) but rather an earlier form of this collection which contained only the Teacher Hymns and the second group of Community Hymns. At a later time the first group of Community Hymns was added to the collection to form the scroll known as 1QH(A). This is argued on the basis of both literary and orthographic patterns. The scroll 4Q428 was organized purposefully around the literary theme of human communion with angels. The essay concludes that the Hodayot were read in series and that there is a thematic progression that culminates with the striking composition known as the "Self-Glorification Hymn."

In her book The Self as Symbolic Space, Carol Newsom asks the question “What do Hodayot do?” She argues persuasively that the Hodayot scroll may have played an important role in the overall strategy of the Qumran community to form community members according to a sectarian identity. In this paper I ask a related question: How do hodayot do what they do? I approach this question from the viewpoint of genre and poetics, seeking to discover what formal features of the hodayot prayer-poems might lend themselves to identity formation. To the extent that the hodayot can be shown to possess such devices, Newsom’s proposal may prove all the more plausible.

I argue that texts are not all equal in their potential to foster formation. The hodayot are particularly well suited for personal formation because they share important features identified by literary critics. The formative potential of any one hodayah depends on its balance of certain features: underdeter- mined language, the lyric ‘I,’ and the lyric present. Together these three features of the text provide the space for a reader or reciter to accept the invitation of the text and identify with the sectarian identity sponsored by the community.

In this study I analyze 1QHa 10:22-32; 11:20-37; and 15:29-36 as representa- tive examples of the hodayot compositions. I show that all the poems contain features connected with ‘lyric’ poetry, but that their formative potential dif- fers based on the balance of the above listed features. Of the three hodayot, 1QHa 10:22-32 is deemed to have the highest formative potential owing to the overall balance of the three features and, especially, to the persistent use of the lyric ‘I’ from beginning to end.

This book examines the collection of prayers known as the Qumran Hodayot (Thanksgiving Hymns). The thesis of this book is that the ritualized reading of reports describing visionary experiences written in the first person "I" functioned to generate within the ancient reader the subjectivity of a visionary which then allowed for the predisposition to have a religious experience. The book offers new interdisciplinary insights into meditative ritual reading as a religious practice for transformation in antiquity.

Out now in paperback in 2018.

This study explores the techniques and socio-cultural norms of the Greek Septuagint (LXX) translation corresponding to Hebrew Psalms 146-150.  The literature review covers scholarly contributions from Translation Studies and Septuagint Studies, integrating both fields into the methodology.  Detailed commentary on each line of the psalms forms the largest section.  A synthesis of the translation techniques points to operational norms affecting quantitative and qualitative features of the Greek text and points to some preliminary norms reflecting the general approach and intended function. 

The findings of this study confirm that the Hebrew source text was very similar to the Masoretic Text.  The translator relied on the LXX Pentateuch and post-biblical Hebrew/Aramaic at times, but usually employed contextual guesses when uncertain.  Overall, the work reflects source-oriented norms evident in formal correspondence to the quantity, order, grammar, and syntax of the Hebrew source terms.  On the other hand, there are various shifts for cohesion, lexical and syntactical standardization and specification, and semantic enhancement.  This interdisciplinary study confirms previous assessments of the LXX Psalter but also qualifies those assessments with extra details.  Some of the dimensions covered include prepositions, lexical consistency, verbal aspect, sound play and thematic features, cohesion, figurative language, poetic parallelism, and socio-cultural settings. 

The thesis has been published by ProQuest UMI here: http://search.proquest.com/docview/1625975056

This essay proposes that Second Temple narrative prayers in first-person voice seek to make otherworldly spaces accessible with first-hand vividness, what we might call an experience of presence. ‘Presence’ is a cognitive state in which a reader gains awareness of ‘being’ in a particular narrative world or otherworldly space.  The first-person voice is the mechanism by which a reader could gain access to an immersive experience of the narrative world of the prayer, thus experiencing in part the things that the speaker describes with the vividness of presence. This study uses relevant aspects of cognitive literary theory to consider how spaces are described in the Qumran hodayot  in such a way as to allow for the phenomenon of immersive reading. How might a reader become lost in a narrative landscape? These questions about how otherworldly spaces achieve the quality of solidity will rely on observations and strategies that literary theorists have made for the writing of fiction and fantasy literature, both of which seek to create compelling narrative worlds for readers. Our discussion will begin by examining elements that encourage the readerly response of ruminating on the text itself, seeking to understand it. The first of these include the effect that bizarre and counterintuitive features of the landscape might have on a reader, leading to a slower reading pace that allows for more cognitive and emotional engagement with the text. Then we will consider how the first-person voice allows a reader to enact the experiences of the hymnist who describes being in a particular narrative place, thereby enscripting the prayer’s embodied experiences for a reader to enact. These embodied experiences will be discussed as either interoceptive experiences (bodily experiences associated with the viscera, including pain, hunger, temperature, and also emotions) or proprioceptive experiences which presume an extended body moving through space (movement, balance, and any kind of kinesthetic action). The first-person narration that is characteristic of prayers provides many details about the interoceptive and proprioceptive experiences of the hymnist, thus giving access to what it might be like to experience the narrative world of the hodayot. The possible effects of reading 1QH 16:5-17:36 on the people who read and transmitted them seeks to take into account the embodied (biological) and cultural contexts of the people of the scrolls, who were living in an ancient Mediterranean culture.

This article describes how the writers of the Hodayot understand Gen 2.7 as describing an anthropological crisis: the human is formed from the dust and wasting away. Drawing on Ezekiel 37, the hymnists maintain that this crisis is overcome by God imparting his Spirit. This understanding of Gen 2.7 is used to illuminate Paul’s argument in 1 Corinthians 15. Paul likewise reads Gen 2.7 as a description of an anthropological problem, and he finds the solution in Ezekiel 37. Yet, he introduces his own twist so that Gen 2.7 comes to express both the crisis and the solution.

This book examines the development of institutionalized prayer in ancient Israel at a crucial time in the history of Western civilization: from the period of the Qumran writings, in the last three centuries BCE, through to the rabbinic period, after 70 CE. It explores the shift from sacrificial worship by priests to abstract, unmediated, direct approaches to the deity by laypeople. It demonstrates the transition from voluntary, freely composed prayers to obligatory prayers with fixed texts. The study shows how Qumran and Samaritan prayer contrast with rabbinic prayer, shedding light on Jewish customs before the rabbinic reform. Posthumously edited by Bernard M. Levinson, Berman Family Chair of Jewish Studies and Hebrw Bible, University of Minnesota http://levinson.umn.edu/ The author Paul Heger (1924-2018; PhD, University of Toronto) has published extensively on Jewish law of the Second Temple period. His research examines how the vibrant religious sectarian scene of late antiquity give way to a much smaller range of possibilities by the time of the Second Temple's destruction and its aftermath.