B. Nitzan

Abstract: "The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Jewish Liturgy"

Bilha Nitzan

The liturgical scrolls from Qumran containing fixed statutory prayer are the earliest written testimony of fixed Jewish liturgy held during the Second Temple period, and possibly in Judaism. Thus, this material represents a milestone in the emergence of Jewish liturgy. According to the Law, worship of God is to be conducted by offering sacrifices. Thus, so long as the Temple existed, prayer took the form of occasional popular worship, conducted alongside or after the sacrificial offering. The earliest known synagogues from the Second Temple period were not used for prayer, but for reading the Scripture and for congregational social activities. The transformation of statutory worship from sacrificial service to prayer in Qumran was an outcome of their polemic with the conduct of the sacrificial system of the Temple during the Hasmonean period, and may be considered in its time as a revolutionary act. Such a transformation became the predominant form of worship in Judaism only after the destruction of the Second Temple.

Although the Qumran community seceded from the mainstream Jewish congregation, its statutory prayers do not include sectarian ideas, apart from the controversial calendrical system, whose influence is prominent in the liturgical system of Qumran. In other respects the Qumran liturgy accentuates themes and forms similar to those known from later Jewish liturgy, albeit in rudimentary shape. This phenomenon raises the possibility that both the Qumran and the Rabbinic liturgical systems are based upon a common tradition. In light of the schismatic reality in the Jewry of the Second Temple period, one needs to ask whether there existed at that time a consolidated religious tradition, expressed in prayer or other literary genres, on which all streams of Judaism could rely. Comparison between the liturgical motifs of Sabbath, festivals and weekdays in Qumran liturgy and biblical and apocryphal literature, on the one hand, and of Rabbinic liturgy, on the other, reflects the common tradition regarding themes and ideas that became the common tradition of all Jewish congregations and generations from the Second Temple period. During the post-biblical and post-Temple generations, statutory prayer became an appropriate vehicle for expressing religious and national ideas.

(c) 2001
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