“Good to give thanks to HaShem.” Photo courtesy of Jocelyn Burney.

Introduction[1]

One of the questions that has arisen from the recovery of a large corpus of psalms and prayers from the Dead Sea Scrolls is the relationship between poetic compositions, including but not limited to those found in the Hodayot scrolls (the “Thanksgiving Hymns” or “Psalms” from Qumran, 1QHodayotᵃ⁻ᵇ, 4QHodayotᵃ⁻ᶠ), and collections of prose prayers for specific occasions that are typically described as “liturgical” (e.g. 4QDaily Prayersᵃ, 4QWords of the Luminariesᵃ,ᶜ, and 4QFestival Prayersᵃ⁻ᶜ). In Schuller’s contribution to the Fifth International Symposium of the Orion Center on Prayer and Poetry in the Dead Sea Scrolls, she raises an important question about how we consider psalms collections in relation to the liturgical literature that began to emerge in the Second Temple period. She asks: “did the poetical compositions that are found among the Dead Sea Scrolls have a liturgical function? That is, do we have evidence that poetry, or at least some poetry, had a place in public, communal worship and thus should be considered—along with prayer—as a component of the liturgy?”[2] 1QHᵃ has been central to this discussion of the possible liturgical function of psalms in the Second Temple period because it was the first collection of poetry to be discovered at Qumran and has remained central in discussions of early Jewish psalms, prayers, and liturgy ever since. One of the chief hurdles in the consideration of the psalms found in 1QHᵃ as compositions that may have been read aloud in communal settings is the use of the term “liturgical” to characterize such settings and texts. In this essay, I will explore an alternative way of conceptualizing the arrangement of psalms in 1QHᵃ, which I hope will advance the discussion of its function or at least unburden it to some extent.

For readers to understand the factors that underlie the attribution of a liturgical function to 1QHᵃ, it is necessary to understand some of the terminology and categories that have been used in Hodayot scholarship. Although some of the early designations for the psalms in 1QHᵃ have lost some of their initial descriptive value, they continue to guide the conceptualization of the function of the collection. After Eleazar Sukenik, a renowned archaeologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, acquired several Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947, he named what is currently designated 1QHodayotᵃ as ההודיות or “the Hodayot,” a literary term in rabbinic literature that can be translated as “the thanksgivings.” The English names for the scroll, the “Thanksgiving Psalms” or “Thanksgiving Hymns” are inspired by Sukenik’s Hebrew title for the collection; however, he almost always referred to 1QHᵃ as the “Thanksgiving Scroll” in his English publications.[3] The name “Hodayot” was chosen because of the similarity of the psalms that Sukenik had examined so far in 1947–48 (1QHᵃ 10–11) with the biblical psalms of thanksgiving, and more particularly because of the opening formula shared by many of the psalms, אודכה אדוני “I thank you, O Lord.”[4] However, in contrast to the biblical psalms of thanksgiving, the psalms in the Hodayot are more concerned with thanking God in anticipation of eschatological assistance and deliverance rather than thanking God after the speaker has already received divine aid. I will refer to these psalms as “eschatological psalms of thanksgiving” to differentiate them from the more retrospective biblical psalms of thanksgiving. Sukenik tentatively suggested that the psalms he had examined so far may be the personal writings of the Teacher of Righteousness, a prominent figure in the history of the sectarian movement, known from CD and 1QpHab (see especially CD 1:11–12 and 1QpHab 11:4–11).[5]

As more of the scroll was opened and examined (approximately 20–30 psalms in what would eventually be reconstructed as 28 reconstructed columns), it became evident to scholars such as Svend Holm-Nielsen, who wrote one of the first commentaries on the Hodayot (1960), and Günter Morawe, in his form-critical dissertation on 1QHᵃ (1961), that the eschatological psalms of thanksgiving in the central columns of the scroll (1QHᵃ 10:5–19:5) were surrounded by two large sections of material that praise God for knowledge and election in a more general way than the eschatological psalms of thanksgiving in 1QHᵃ.[6] Some of these psalms of praise are explicitly associated with the office of the Maskil (sometimes translated “Master,” “Sage,” or “Instructor”) from Qumran in superscriptions (1QHᵃ 5:12–14, 7:21, 20:7–14, 25:34). As a result, Sukenik’s preliminary proposal that 1QHᵃ consists of psalms of individual thanksgiving proved too monolithic once the contents of the entire manuscript were surveyed, and many of the previously unexamined psalms seemed more like psalms praising God in connection with the sectarian office of the Maskil than personal thanksgiving psalms composed by the Teacher of Righteousness.

Some readers may be familiar with the division of the Hodayot into “Teacher Hymns” and “Community Hymns.” This schema emerged out of insights from the published dissertations of Gert Jeremias (1963), Jürgen Becker (1964), and Heinz-Wolfgang Kuhn (1966). It attempts to account for differences in genre, use of distinctive phrases, style, orthography, scriptural allusions, and evidence of redactional development.[7] The schema is problematic because there is a considerable lack of agreement about what the categories represent and which psalms belong to them. The Teacher Hymns as a category emerged out of Sukenik’s speculation that some of the psalms were authored by the Teacher of Righteousness (Jeremias).[8] As a result, the “I” of the remaining psalms was associated with the perspective of the general membership of the sectarian community because they lack the specificity and personal stamp of the Teacher Hymns (Becker and Kuhn). Angela Kim Harkins deftly captures the inadequacy of the Community Hymns as a category by relabelling them as “non-Teacher Hymns,” drawing attention to how they are mainly categorized together by the features they commonly lack.[9] Carol Newsom has recently advocated for setting aside the category of the “Community Hymns” altogether and instead treating the surviving psalms in cols. 4:13–10:4 and 19:6–28:42 as Maskil psalms because of their implicit and explicit association with the office of the Maskil.[10] I will refer to these compositions as “Maskilic” psalms because any reader—not just a Maskil—could read from the subject position of the “I” of these psalms. However, someone occupying the role of a Maskil or a Maskil-like role would provide the most compelling and credible performance of Maskilic psalms in a sectarian context. In sectarian literature from Qumran, a Maskil is described as a broker of esoteric knowledge with a very prominent role in educating and enlightening the members of the movement to praise God appropriately and with insight into the divine mysteries (1QS 9:18; 1QHᵃ 6:20). The Teacher Hymns category can likewise be abandoned because there is not a sound evidential basis for identifying the author or speaker as the Teacher of Righteousness. Even designating a subgroup of thanksgiving psalms as compositions expressing the perspective of a generic or unspecified teacher or leader, as Newsom has previously suggested, is problematic because all the psalms in the Hodayot corpus can be read as compositions for a teacher, especially the psalms associated with a Maskil.[11] After setting aside the Teacher Hymn-Community Hymn schema, we are left with Newsom’s Maskilic psalms (1QHᵃ 4:13–10:4 and 19:6–28:42), and the eschatological psalms of thanksgiving (10:5–19:5). The Maskilic psalms that surround the eschatological psalms of thanksgiving in 1QHᵃ are critical for understanding why a liturgical function has been proposed for 1QHᵃ in Hodayot scholarship.

“Liturgical” Functions of 1QHᵃ and 4QHᵃ

Svend Holm-Nielsen’s commentary on 1QHᵃ (1960) is one of the earliest and most prominent studies to advocate that 1QHᵃ was a liturgical collection.[12] He was reacting against suggestions that the psalms in 1QHᵃ were literature to be read for personal edification or purely for non-liturgical instruction.[13] Holm-Nielsen insisted that the psalms are “examples of the Qumran community’s liturgical prayers and songs of praise.”[14] He understood the term “liturgy” as coordinated worship of the divine in a communal setting, inclusive of both prayer and praise as well as poetry and prose.[15] This very basic definition is limited because it lacks a sound theoretical basis and fails to address the full range of what one might or might not consider liturgical. Definitions of liturgy tend to be quite specific to the person using them. Liturgy is, for example, starkly different in certain Christian liturgical settings, where it is closely tied to the Eucharist, and in traditional Jewish settings, where it is tied to a system of obligatory prayers and blessings. Holm-Nielsen and others who use language of “liturgy” and “liturgical” with respect to the Hodayot are referring to a category of religious activity that is much less culturally specific—that when the text of a prayer or psalm is read or recited as part of a communal service of prayer or praise, it can be described as liturgical. This loose and under-theorized definition has limitations, which will be addressed further in the next section. Holm-Nielsen does not consider the psalms in 1QHᵃ to be explicitly attached to any particular time, event, or festival, though a fixed time cannot be entirely ruled out by the absence of an explicit occasion. He suggests that at least some of the psalms (especially in 1QHᵃ 4:21–40, 6:19–38, and 8:18–37) may have formed “part of a liturgy” for the initiation of new members because of similar phrasing in the references to an induction process in 1QS 1–3.[16]

The discovery of additional Hodayot scrolls in Cave 4 (4QHᵃ⁻ᶠ) in the mid-1950s contributed to the sense that at least some of the Hodayot manuscripts may have had a liturgical function. In Eileen Schuller’s edition of 4QHᵃ (1999), she tentatively described the shorter collection in 4QHᵃ as “more liturgically oriented” than the other Hodayot manuscripts because it combines into a single collection the psalms with liturgical features, including Maskil superscriptions, first-person plural forms, plural summons to praise, series of blessings/doxological praises, and the “List of Appointed Times” for thanksgiving and prayer (1QHᵃ 20:7–14).[17] In other words, 4QHᵃ provides an example of an arrangement of Hodayot psalms that dominantly presents itself as a series of psalms to be read by a Maskil in a communal setting.

Building on Schuller’s suggestion about the possible liturgical orientation of 4QHᵃ, Esther Chazon re-examined 1QHᵃ and developed further Holm-Nielsen’s proposal that 1QHᵃ might have had a liturgical function. In contrast to Holm-Nielsen, who was working with Sukenik’s largely unreconstructed edition of 1QHᵃ from 1954, Chazon had access to the reconstruction of 1QHᵃ that was separately and independently developed by Hartmut Stegemann (dissertation in 1963; posthumous DJD edition in 2009) and Émile Puech (1988).[18] On the basis of the improved reconstruction she had a better sense of the sequence of psalms in 1QHᵃ. She designated 1QHᵃ as another “liturgically-oriented” collection because of the presence of the same liturgical features that Schuller had identified and based on its wide-ranging emphasis on praising God with the angels. This theme appears in the Maskilic psalms and eschatological psalms of thanksgiving alike (1QHᵃ 7:12–20, 11:20–37, 19:6–20:6, 25:34–27:3; possibly also 13:22–15:8 and 23:1–25:33).[19] Critically, she noted that the editor has arranged the psalms in the collection so that the eschatological psalms of thanksgiving are sandwiched between the Maskilic psalms with the most liturgical features. She proposes that this editorial recontextualization of the more individualistic psalms within the communally-oriented material has the effect of taking up the former into the liturgical function of the latter. Thus, according to Chazon, the sequencing of psalms in the reconstructed form of 1QHᵃ “should now be counted as additional evidence of this collection’s liturgical function.”[20]

“Liturgical” Features and Transition Psalms in 1QHᵃ as Markers of Ritualization

Even if it is difficult or even problematic to say whether 1QHᵃ or 4QHᵃ are in some sense liturgical, Holm-Nielsen, Schuller, and Chazon have assembled a considerable amount of evidence that supports the interpretation of 1QHᵃ and 4QHᵃ as part of (or depicted as part of) a communal performance or ceremony, as discussed above. One of the primary difficulties in describing 1QHᵃ and 4QHᵃ as “liturgical” or “liturgically oriented” is the cognitive dissonance generated by the terminology and differing senses of just what counts as liturgical. In the domain of ritual studies, the category of “liturgy” and “liturgical” is sometimes avoided because it can be deployed as an unduly biased designation for a ritual. At least in some contexts, what might be regarded as a more culturally acceptable ritual might warrant the more dignified label of a liturgy, whereas a ritual that falls out of what is considered mainstream may be designated as magic, superstition, or an occult practice. Ritual studies provides a partial corrective by levelling out these qualitative designations with the arguably more neutral term “ritual,” though even this term has negative connotations, for example, in Christian Protestant contexts.[21] Still, considering the function of Hodayot collections like 1QHᵃ and 4QHᵃ through the lens of ritual rather than liturgy has the benefit of curbing the subjective sense of what one counts as legitimate liturgy, and broadens our perspective to consider the activity of the reading or recitation of psalms and prayers as part of the wider array of communal ritual activity in a Second Temple Jewish context.[22]

Catherine Bell’s concept of “ritualization” as differentiated activity is especially helpful for thinking about the sequence of psalms in 1QHᵃ and how it presents itself as a series of poetic texts to be read in the presence of an audience. Bell advocated for examining how processes of ritualization set off ritual activities from more conventional or routine versions of the same practices.[23] It is certainly possible that the eschatological psalms of thanksgiving in 1QHᵃ 10:5–19:5 were originally meant to be read or studied privately outside of a communal setting. But as Chazon noted, they now appear embedded and recontextualized within a new context of a Maskil praising God in a communal setting. I would suggest that this editorial activity of embedding these individualistic eschatological psalms of thanksgiving has the effect of ritualizing them or at least depicting them as ritualized psalms. That is, the act of embedding differentiates them from any previous function that they might have had and deploys them as psalms to be read in a communal setting as an integral part of a larger sequence of communally marked psalms of praise.[24]

The clearest indications of this ritualization are found in the transition psalms that appear in cols. 9:1–10:4 and 19:6–20:6 before and after the eschatological psalms of thanksgiving. Col. 9 prepares the audience to hear these eschatological psalms of thanksgiving as part of the performance that they are to hear and absorb:

And I will recit[e continually] in their midst the judgments which have afflicted me, and to humankind all your wonders by which you have shown yourself strong through [me before hu]mankind. Hear, O sages, and those who ponder knowledge. May those who are eager become firm in purpose. [All who are straight of wa]y become more discerning. O righteous ones, put an end to injustice. And all you whose way is perfect, hold fast [ O you who are cru]shed by poverty, be patient. Do not reject [righteous] judgment[s But the ]yly of mind do not understand these things and [ ] dʾm [ ] [the ruth]less grind [(their) teeth ] (1QHᵃ 9:35–41).

This transitional passage sets up the eschatological thanksgiving psalms that follow as part of the speaker’s continual recitation of judgements and wonders that he has experienced. Thus, the highly personalized accounts of distress and deliverance that follow in the eschatological psalms of thanksgiving are embedded into the Maskilic discourse that precedes them in 1QHᵃ. As a result, the Maskilic speaker from the previous columns fuses with the unspecified “I” of the eschatological psalms of thanksgiving when the entire collection is read sequentially. The whole sequence of eschatological thanksgiving psalms becomes a subset of the Maskilic psalms that encompass them.

The psalm in 1QHᵃ 19:6–20:6 serves a similar transitional function before the Maskilic psalms in cols. 20–28. The psalm closes with blessing formulae which are often viewed as features of liturgical texts:

Blessed are you, [O Lord, w]ho have given to your servant insightful knowledge to understand your wondrous works and [a ready an]sw[er in order to] tell of the abundance of your kindness. Blessed are you, God of compassion and grace, according to the great[ness of] your st[ren]gth and the magnitude of your truth, and the abundan[ce] of your kindness with all your creatures…By your forgiveness[s] you relieve my pains, and in my troubles you comfort me, for I depend on your compassion. Blessed are yo[u,] O Lord, for you have done these things, and you have put into the mouth of your servant hymns of pr[a]is[e] and a prayer of supplication, and a ready answer. (1QHᵃ 19:30–37).

The speaker blesses God for “these things” (1QHᵃ 19:36) that God has done, referring the reader back to previously disclosed divine activity on his behalf. Appearing at the end of the section containing the eschatological psalms of thanksgiving, the blessings in 1QHᵃ 19:30–37 refer the audience back to the accounts of God’s assistance and anticipated deliverance in the preceding psalms as a proffered motivation for blessing and praising God in col. 19 and in the Maskilic psalms in the remainder of the scroll.

Conclusion

The transition psalms in 1QHᵃ 9:1–10:4 and 19:6–20:6 embed and reorient the more individualistic eschatological psalms of thanksgiving in 1QHᵃ 10:5–19:5 as part of the larger performance of the Maskil presented in the Maskilic psalms. In this new context, the eschatological psalms of thanksgiving are now employed as recitations of God’s assistance and deliverance of a Maskilic speaker. I am proposing that this embedding process can be understood as a ritualization of the eschatological thanksgiving psalms that differentiates them from their previous, possibly non-communal or non-Maskilic function. Building on Chazon’s proposal, I would suggest that the Maskilic psalms are deployed as part of a strategy to absorb and ritualize the eschatological psalms of thanksgiving in 1QHᵃ. Even if the eschatological psalms of thanksgiving were not originally intended for a Maskil’s performance in a group setting, they are now integrated in 1QHᵃ as a component of what is presented as a Maskil-led service of praise in their present context.

Michael B. Johnson is the Azrieli International Postdoctoral Fellow at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem

[1]. This research is supported in part by the Azrieli Foundation, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research (Educational and Cultural Affairs Junior Research Fellowship), and the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature (Orion Center Research Scholarship).

[2]. Eileen M. Schuller, “Some Reflections on the Function and Use of Poetical Texts among the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Liturgical Perspectives: Prayer and Poetry in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Proceedings of the Fifth International Symposium of the Orion Center, 19-23 January, 2000, eds. Esther G. Chazon, Ruth Clements, and Avital Pinnick, STDJ 48 (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 173.

[3]. Eleazar L. Sukenik, The Dead Sea Scrolls of the Hebrew University [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1954); Eleazar L. Sukenik, The Dead Sea Scrolls of the Hebrew University (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1955).

[4]. Eleazar L. Sukenik, Hidden Scrolls from the Ancient Genizah Discovered in the Judean Desert, First Report [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Bialik, 1948), 27–32. All column and line numbers are according to Hartmut Stegemann and Eileen M. Schuller, Qumran Cave 1. III, 1QHodayotᵃ with Incorporation of 1QHodayotᵇ and 4QHodayotᵃ⁻ᶠ, DJD 40 (Oxford: Clarendon, 2009), also available in Eileen M. Schuller and Carol A. Newsom, The Hodayot (Thanksgiving Psalms): A Study Edition of 1QHᵃ, EJL 36 (Atlanta: SBL, 2012).

[5]. Sukenik, DSSHU [1955], 39.

[6]. Svend Holm-Nielsen, Hodayot: Psalms from Qumran, ATDan 2 (Aarhus: Universitetsforlaget, 1960); Günter Morawe, Aufbau und Abgrenzung der Loblieder von Qumrân: Studien zur gattungsgeschichtlichen Einordnung der Hodajôth, GTA 16 (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1961).

[7]. Gert Jeremias, Der Lehrer der Gerechtigkeit, SUNT 2 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1963); Jürgen Becker, Das Heil Gottes: Heils- und Sündenbegriffe in den Qumrantexten und im Neuen Testament, SUNT 3 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964); Heinz-Wolfgang Kuhn, Enderwartung und gegenwärtiges Heil: Untersuchungen zu den Gemeindeliedern von Qumran, SUNT 4 (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1966).

[8]. Jeremias, Der Lehrer der Gerechtigkeit; see also Michael C. Douglas, “Power and Praise in the Hodayot: A Literary Critical Study of 1QH 9:1-18:14” (Dissertation, University of Chicago, 1998) and “The Teacher Hymn Hypothesis Revisited: New Data for an Old Crux,” DSD 6.3 (1999), 239–66.

[9]. Angela Kim Harkins, “A New Proposal for Thinking about 1QHA Sixty Years after Its Discovery,” in Qumran Cave 1 Revisited: Texts from Cave 1 Sixty Years after Their Discovery. Proceedings of the Sixth Meeting of the IOQS in Ljubljana, eds. Daniel K. Falk et al., STDJ 91 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 107.

[10]. Carol A. Newsom, “A Farewell to the Hodayot of the Community,” DSD 28.1 (2021), 15–16.

[11]. Carol A. Newsom, The Self as Symbolic Space: Constructing Identity and Community at Qumran, STDJ 52 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 287–9.

[12]. Holm-Nielsen, Hodayot, 332–48.

[13]. Hans Bardtke, “Considérations sur les cantiques de Qumrân,” RB 63.2 (1956), 220–33; Georg Molin, Die Söhne des Lichtes: Zeit und Stellung der Handschriften vom Toten Meer (Wien: Herold, 1954), 102–3; J. P. M. van der Ploeg, The Excavations at Qumran: A Survey of the Judaean Brotherhood and Its Ideas (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1958), 176; see also Bilhah Nitzan, Qumran Prayer and Religious Poetry, STDJ 12 (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 321–54.

[14]. Holm-Nielsen, Hodayot, 348.

[15]. Holm-Nielsen, Hodayot, 333.

[16]. Holm-Nielsen, Hodayot, 344.

[17]. Eileen M. Schuller, “427. 4QHodayotᵃ,” in Qumran Cave 4. XX, Poetical and Liturgical Texts. Part 2, eds. Esther G. Chazon et al., DJD 29 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1999), 86–7.

[18]. Émile Puech, “Quelques aspects de la restauration du rouleau des hymnes (1QH),” JJS 39.1 (1988),” 38–55; Hartmut Stegemann, “Rekonstruktion der Hodajot: Ursprüngliche Gestalt und kritisch bearbeiteter Text der Hymnenrolle aus Höhle 1 von Qumran” (PhD diss., University of Heidelberg, 1963); Stegemann and Schuller, Qumran Cave 1. III, 1QHodayotᵃ.

[19]. Esther G. Chazon, “Liturgical Function in the Cave 1 Hodayot Collection,” in Qumran Cave 1 Revisited: Texts from Cave 1 Sixty Years after Their Discovery. Proceedings of the Sixth Meeting of the IOQS in Ljubljana, eds. Daniel K. Falk et al., STDJ 48 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 137, 148.

[20]. Chazon, “Liturgical Function,” 149.

[21]. Catherine M. Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 6–7; Catherine Bell, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions, Rev. ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 254–6.

[22]. Judith H. Newman, Before the Bible: The Liturgical Body and the Formation of Scriptures in Early Judaism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 8–9.

[23]. Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice, 7–8, 74; for other applications of ritualization to scriptural texts, see Newman, Before the Bible, 75–105, 132–7.

[24]. See also Trine Hasselbalch use of the socio-linguistic concept of entextualization to characterize the embedding of these compositions in 1QHᵃ. Trine B. Hasselbalch, Meaning and Context in the Thanksgiving Hymns: Linguistic and Rhetorical Perspectives on a Collection of Prayers from Qumran, EJL 42 (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2015), 15–16, 243, 245.