| Among the Dead Sea Scrolls was found a significant number of texts, many of which were only recently made available to scholars, relating to the ritual and liturgical life of the members of community settled at Qumran. These texts represent the earliest evidence of fixed, liturgical and communal prayer associated with regular events in Judaism. As such, these texts raise many questions about the early development of Jewish prayer, and its relationship with the Temple in Jerusalem. Up to this point, scholarly treatment of these materials has focused primarily on reconstructing and interpreting individual texts and determining their provenance. This dissertation employs various social-scientific approaches to describe a system of liturgical practice organized into six types: rites of passage, feasts and fasts, calendrical rites, rites of affliction, political rites, and rites of communion. This project discusses this evidence from a social perspective, understanding the practice of the liturgy specifically within the context of the complex social structures and ideologies of the sectarian Qumran community. Qumran's liturgy conveys meaning on many different levels. The content of the liturgies represents the community's social organization and its ideology, goals, and hopes. As performative speech, liturgy also constitutes an action by its performance, and as such communicates something about the purposes or functions of engaging in such an act. For example, the recitation of specific liturgies associated with the natural cycles of time communicates Qumran's commitment to upholding the idealized solar calendar they believed represented God's ordering of creation. A liturgical practice can also have a real effect on the members of that community. At Qumran, many liturgies reinforced internal hierarchies of authority and emphasized communal identity. Others were designed to indoctrinate new members with its ideology. For the Qumran community, a group committed to purity, holiness, and perfect obedience to God's laws in all things, their extensive liturgical practice provided assurance, not only that its communal identity would remain intact, but also that they were in fact partnering with God and joining the angelic hosts in following the divine plan for the world until the end. |
