The Origin of Fixed Communal Prayer: Evidence from Qumran

Of the 1500 Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in the mid-twentieth century, 940 of them were unearthed in eleven caves at Qumran, the remainder in several other sites along the western shore of the Dead Sea.^[1] The sheer quantity of material renders them significant, all the more so because they are virtually the only Jewish texts that survived in Hebrew and Aramaic from this period, thereby filling in substantial gaps in our knowledge of Jewish history and practice in the centuries before and the century after the turn of the millennium.

The group who lived at Qumran referred to itself as the Yaḥad, literally, “together,” denoting the community. The Yaḥad’s own works employ distinctive terminology in treating its communal organization, practices, history, religious and political controversies, and deterministic, dualistic, and messianic ideology.^[2]

At the same time, the Yaḥad preserved non-sectarian compositions, as can be seen by the more than two hundred copies of biblical books as well as the hundreds of other texts in the Qumran library that lack these sectarian markers. These texts give us a window into the religious practices of other Jews living in Judea at that time and to shared traditions in such major areas as biblical interpretation, Jewish law, and prayer.

The Corpus of Prayers in the Dead Sea Scrolls

The Qumran corpus preserves more than 300 discrete hymns, prayers, and psalms, including about one hundred biblical psalms.^[3] These 300 items fall into six basic categories.

1. Ceremonial Liturgies—liturgies for sectarian ceremonies such as the Yaḥad’s annual covenant renewal, initiation rite (quoted below), and expulsion of disobedient members, as prescribed in the Community Rule and the Damascus Document; several purification rituals; battle, victory, and blessing ceremonies for אחרית הימים “the end-of-days”—most famously, those in the Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness.

2. Hodayot (literally “Thanksgivings”)—sectarian thanksgiving hymns that typically open with the formula, אודכה אדוני “I thank you, Lord” and offer thanks for the speaker’s election, salvation by God’s grace, and endowment with the divine gifts of knowledge and speech, including praising God with the angels. One such prayer opens:

אודכה אדוני כי פדיתה נפשי משחת . . . להתיצב במעמד עם צבא קדושים ולבוא ביחד עם עדת בני שמים . . . להלל שמכה ביחד רנה.

^{1QHa 11:20-24} I thank you, Lord, that you have redeemed my life from the pit . . . that it might take its place with the host of holy ones and enter into community (Yaḥad) with a congregation of the children of heaven . . . to praise your name in a common (Yaḥad) rejoicing.^[4]

Several hodayot speak of “we/us,” signaling their liturgical use by a community, apparently led by the “I” speaker.

3. Magic incantations and prayers to ward off demons—exorcisms, sectarian Songs of the Sage לפחד ולבהל רוחי רשע “to frighten and to terrify evil spirits” and the non-sectarian Cave 11 Apocryphal Psalms containing incantation (לחש) and adjuration ((משביע formulae addressed to a demon.^[5]

4. Psalms Collections—scrolls comprising psalms solely from the Hebrew Bible, non-canonical psalmic collections, and scrolls that juxtapose biblical and apocryphal psalms. Notably, the deluxe^[6] Cave 11 Psalms Scroll, which intersperses some forty psalms found in the Hebrew Bible with four attested in other sources (Greek Bible, Syriac Psalter, and Ben Sira) and three previously unknown psalms (Hymn to the Creator, Plea for Deliverance, Apostrophe to Zion) in what appears to be an arrangement for liturgical purposes.^[7]

5. Prose Prayers—prayers embedded in narratives, some of which may have originated in real-life settings, or else, and all tend to employ features used in prayer practices. Such prayers are sometimes from the Bible, such as the Song of the Sea (Exod 15:1–19) and Hannah’s prayers (1 Sam 1:11, 2:1–10) but also from the Apocrypha, such as Tobit’s prayer with his proclamation of divine justice (Tobit 3:2–6), from the Pseudepigrapha,^[8] such as Noah’s prayer for his sons’ protection from evil spirits in Jubilees (10:3-6), and from parabiblical works such as Abraham’s petitionary prayer in the Genesis Apocryphon (20:12–16), which even opens with a formal blessing:

בריך אנתה אל עליון מרי לכול עלמים די אנתה מרה ושליט על כולא ובכול מלכי ארעא אנתה שליט למעבד בכולהון דין...^[9]

^{1QapGen 20:12–13} Blessed are you, Most High God, my Master for all eternity, for you are the master and ruler of all, and you rule over all kings of the earth, to do justice with them…

6. Liturgies For Fixed Prayer Times—liturgical collections, each containing a cycle of communal prayers for recitation at fixed times of the day, week, month, or year. Of the major liturgical collections, two of them are plausibly of sectarian origin:

• The Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice (4Q400-407, 11Q17),^[10] containing thirteen songs for the first quarter of the year, perhaps repeated quarterly throughout the entire year. This Sabbath liturgy uses the 364-day solar calendar, beginning the year in the spring month of Nisan; it is the calendar advocated by the Yaḥad as well as others.^[11]
• The Daily Prayers (4Q503), comprised of blessings for each day of the month for the renewal of the heavenly lights (the moon and the sun) at each evening and morning. The dates for each day of the month in this liturgical cycle indicate that it too follows the 364-day solar calendar.

The other two liturgical collections, however, are dissonant with Yaḥad writings and are surely non-sectarian in origin:

• The Words of the Luminaries (4Q504–506), a very early text (ca. 175–150 B.C.E.), containing petitionary prayers for each weekday and a hymn of praise for the Sabbath;
• The Festival Prayers (1Q34, 4Q507-509) for the annual holidays beginning with the New Year and Day of Atonement in the month of Tishrei; this differs from the sectarian calendar that began in the month of Nisan.^[12]

Why did the Yaḥad preserve, copy, and presumably use non-sectarian prayers, even those dissonant with sectarian ideology and identity? One compelling answer to this question is that the non-sectarian prayers, psalms, and hymns in the Qumran library would have contributed to the Yahad’s development of prayer as an “offering of the lips” illustrated in the next section.

Replacing the Temple Sacrifices with Prayer in Qumran

The Yaḥad considered itself the “elect” “congregation of God,” the only true “keepers of God’s covenant” with Israel, living the “perfect way” together (Yaḥad) in proper adherence to the Torah (Law) as revealed only to them. Accordingly, the Community Rule (Serekh haYaḥad) legislates:

כול הבא לעצת היחד יבוא בברית אל ויקם על נפשו בשבועת אסר לשוב אל תורת מושה ככול אשר צוה בכול לב ובכול נפש ולכול הנגלה ממנה מן התורה ולהבדל מכול אנשי העול

^{1QS 5:7-11//4QSb 9:6-8//4QSd 1:5-7} Every initiate into the council of the Yaḥad shall take upon himself a binding oath to return (לשוב) to the Torah of Moses with all (his) heart and with all (his) soul,^[13] regarding everything revealed from the Torah, in accordance with the council of the Yaḥad and to be separated from all the people of iniquity.

The Yaḥad’s by-laws repeatedly demand that its members separate from “the people of iniquity”—all non-members, including other Israelites in particular, the lenient “seekers of smooth things”—perhaps the Pharisees and the Jerusalem priests (discussed below).

Notably, the Yaḥad objected to participation in the (in their view) טמא “defiled” Jerusalem Temple and its priests who, according to the Yaḥad, conducted the sacrifices improperly. This split presumably contributed to the sect’s development of prayer as an alternative form of worship on a par with sacrifice. In the words of the Damascus Document:

זבח רשעים תועבה ותפלת צדקים כמנחת רצון.

^{CD 11:20-21} The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination but the prayer of the righteous is like a pleasing meal offering.^[14]

This a reworked quotation of Proverbs 15:8, removing explicit references to God and adding the word כמנחת (“as a meal offering”):

^{משלי טו:ח} זֶבַח רְשָׁעִים תּוֹעֲבַת יְ־הֹוָה וּתְפִלַּת יְשָׁרִים רְצוֹנוֹ.

^{Prov 15:8} The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to YHWH but the prayer of the upright is his pleasure.^[15]

The Community Rule states something similar:

ותרומת שפתים למשפט כניחוח צדק.

^{1QS 9:4-5} An offering of the lips for justice as a fragrance of righteousness.^[16]

The hymn that closes the Community Rule proclaims the speaker’s commitment to offer praise at least twice daily, at dawn/sunrise and dusk/sunset:

‏[ותרומת] שפתים יברכנו‏ עם קצים אשר חקקא ברשית ממשלת אור עמ תקופתו ובהאספו על מעון חוקו ברשית ‎אשמורי חושכ כיא יפתח אוצרו וישתהו עלת ובתקופתו עם האספו מפני אור באופיע‏ מאורות מזבול קודש עם האספם למעון כבוד.

^{1QS 9:26–10:3} [With offering of] lips shall he bless Him at the times ordained: at the beginning of the dominion of light, each time it turns, and when it is regathered into its dwelling place at the beginning of the watches of darkness, as He opens His storehouse and spreads it over—and when it turns, withdrawing before the light; when the luminaries show forth from the holy habitation, and when they are regathered into their dwelling place of glory.^[17]

The hymnist’s “offering of the lips” at “appointed times” could have served as a model for Yaḥad members at large and plausibly reflected their prayer practice, as suggested by the sacrificial language for prayer in this and other Yaḥad texts.

The hymn’s depiction of the divinely appointed prayer times in both astronomical-calendric and sacrificial terms indicates that the Yaḥad coordinated its prayers not only with the luminaries’ movements but also with the corresponding cultic times: the hour when the two daily tamid sacrifices were offered in the Temple: בַבֹּקֶר “in the morning” and בֵּין הָעַרְבָּיִם “between the two evenings” (Exod 29:39; Num 28:4, 8). Both conceptual models of why prayer is offered in the morning and evening—sacrificial and astronomical—have biblical roots and are well attested in Second Temple period writings.^[18] Some examples are given below.

Sacrificial Terms

^{תהלים קמא:ב} תִּכּוֹן תְּפִלָּתִי קְטֹרֶת לְפָנֶיךָ מַשְׂאַת כַּפַּי מִנְחַת עָרֶב.

^{Ps 141:2} Take my prayer as an offering of incense, my upraised hands as an evening sacrifice.^[19]

^{Judith 9:1} …At the very time when the evening incense was being offered in the house of God in Jerusalem, Judith cried out to the Lord with a loud voice.^[20]

Astronomical Terms

^{תהלים נה:יח} עֶרֶב וָבֹקֶר וְצׇהֳרַיִם אָשִׂיחָה וְאֶהֱמֶה וַיִּשְׁמַע קוֹלִי.

^{Ps 55:18} Evening, morning, and noon, I complain and moan, and my voice is heard.^[21]

^{Wis 16:28} to make it known that one must rise before the sun to give you thanks and must pray to you at the dawning of the light.^[22]

The Yaḥad evidently enlisted the shared Jewish heritage here as well as elsewhere, notably, in its commitment to the Torah seen above and its use of blessings demonstrated below. Indeed, co-opting that cultural heritage was a pervasive feature of the Yaḥad’s writings and strategic for staking its claim to be the elect “congregation of God.” As such, this suggests another reason for the Yaḥad’s adoption of non-sectarian prayers, psalms, and hymns in addition to their obvious contribution to the Yaḥad’s prayer practice and concept of an “offering of the lips.”

Earliest Evidence of Fixed Routine Communal Prayer

The liturgical collections discovered at Qumran furnish our first solid evidence of communal prayers at regular fixed prayer times in Judea during the Second Temple period. This finding, particularly for the non-sectarian collections, corrects older conceptions that negated the possibility of routine communal prayer in the land of Israel while the Temple was standing and argued that the beginning of Jewish liturgy must be dated after, and as a response to, the Temple’s destruction in 70 C.E.^[23]

The Bible, Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, Philo and other previously known pre-70 C.E. sources gave us hundreds of psalms and prose prayers, virtually all of which are prayers by an individual even when offered on the people’s behalf, and they are generally for special or acute ad hoc – not routine – occasions. Priestly sacrifices, concluding with the Levites’ song, constituted the service in the Second Temple,^[24] and the main religious activity in the ancient synagogue was weekly public Torah reading, not routine prayer.^[25]

Laypersons apparently said their private prayers in the temple courtyard (see Ben Sira 50:1-24, Luke 1:8-10, Acts 3:1) and some pious individuals may have prayed daily (see Psalm 55:18 and Daniel 6:11), but routine communal prayer was not attested until the publication of the Scrolls’ liturgical collections for fixed prayer times. Rather, previously, our earliest evidence for fixed Jewish liturgy was the Mishnah (ca. 230 C.E.) and other early rabbinic works.

Even so, rabbinic literature records liturgical rules, referring by name or key words to the prayers but generally without giving their full prayer texts. Those texts and their arrangement in the daily and festival prayer services first surface in the earliest, complete Jewish prayer books by Rav Amram Gaon and Rav Saadia Gaon (ninth-tenth centuries C.E.; the partial Afgan siddur is eighth century C.E.).^[26] The liturgical collections from Qumran, with their complete texts for fixed communal prayer, including many linguistic and formulaic parallels with the rabbinic liturgy and early Jewish prayer books, are an amazing treasure-trove.

Second Person Address to God in Blessings

One of the many ways in which the Scrolls’ liturgical collections fill the void between biblical and rabbinic prayer is by shedding light on the background of the rabbinic blessing formula. The classical biblical blessing is a spontaneous expression of personal gratitude, opening with the words, בָּרוּךְ יְיָ “Blessed is God,” referring to God in the third person, and continuing with a relative clause praising “Him” for a specific divine action or gift. Thus, upon meeting Rebecca, who fulfilled his criteria as the future wife of Isaac, Abraham’s servant declares:

^{בראשית כד:כז} וַיֹּאמֶר בָּרוּךְ יְ־הֹוָה אֱלֹהֵי אֲדֹנִי אַבְרָהָם אֲשֶׁר לֹא עָזַב חַסְדּוֹ וַאֲמִתּוֹ מֵעִם אֲדֹנִי...

^{Gen 24:27} And he said, “Blessed be YHWH, the God of my master Abraham, who has not withheld steadfast faithfulness from my master….”

Similarly, after Jethro hears how the Israelites were saved from Egypt, he declares:

^{שמות יח:י} וַיֹּאמֶר יִתְרוֹ בָּרוּךְ יְ־הֹוָה אֲשֶׁר הִצִּיל אֶתְכֶם מִיַּד מִצְרַיִם וּמִיַּד פַּרְעֹה...

^{Exod 18:10} Jethro said: “Blessed be YHWH who delivered you from the Egyptians and from Pharaoh…”

In contrast, rabbinic prayer adds the second person “You” to its blessings, before turning to the third person description, , which can be formulated with a relative clause as in the classic biblical blessing or as a participle as in the following example from the first benediction before the Shema:

ברוך אתה יי אלהינו מלך העולם יוצר אור ובורא חושך . . . ברוך אתה יי יוצר המאורות.

Blessed are You, God, our God, King of the Universe, who forms light and creates darkness . . . Blessed are You, God, who forms the luminaries.

The address to God as “You” and the use of the participle are innovations vis-á-vis the classical biblical blessing; they occur only sporadically as “anomalies” in a few late biblical contexts,^[27] and now in scores of blessings in the Scrolls, confirming them as genuine Second Temple period developments that have a later rabbinic trajectory. For example, some of the blessings for the renewal of the heavenly lights in The Daily Prayers (4Q503) have both the 2^nd person pronoun, some employ the relative pronoun, and some the participle:

ברו]ך̇ אתה אל̊ יש̊ראל אשר העמדת[ . . . ] ‏ [שלום עליכה ישראל] בכול מועדׄ[י] לילה^[28]

^{4Q503 frgs. 33i-34} [Bless]ed are You, God of Israel, that you have set up[. . .] [Peace be with you, Israel] at all moment[s of] the night.

[ברו]ך̊ אל ישרא̊ל̊ המפל̊[יא]

^{4Q503, frgs. 15-16} [Bless]ed is the God of Israel who performs mira[cles]

יברכו [וענו ואמרו ברוך אל ישראל א]שר בח[ר] בנו מכול [ה]גויים

^{4Q503 frgs. 24-25} They shall bless [and recite and say, Blessed is the God of Israel w]ho has chos[en] us from all [the] nations

This blessing has a close parallel in rabbinic liturgy, in the blessing before reading the Torah:

ברוך אתה יי אלהינו מלך העולם אשר בחר בנו מכל העמים ונתן לנו את תורתו. ברוך אתה יי נותן התורה.

Blessed are You, God, our God, King of the Universe, who has chosen us from all peoples and given us His Torah. Blessed are You, God, who gives the Torah.^[29]

Opening and Closing Framing Blessings

The blessing just quoted is a closing blessing, i.e., a blessing that appears at the end of a longer prayer. Indeed, Qumran blessings anticipate rabbinic convention in their formal use of opening and closing blessings.

Differing somewhat from the rabbinic liturgical benediction, the Words of the Luminaries (4Q504) employs a blessing formula with a relative clause (“who has…”) to close each weekday petition. For example, here is the end of the prayer for the first day of the week:

מולה עורלת̇[ לבבנו ואל תקשה ע] ו֯ר̇[פ]נ̊ו̊ עוד חזק לבנו ל̊ע̇שות[ . . . ל]לכת בדר̊כיכה [. . . ברוך ]אדוני אשר הודי[ענו . . . ]א̇מן אמן

^{4Q504 frg. 4 ll. 11-15} Circumcise the foreskin of[ our heart and do not stiffen] our [n]ec[k] anymore. Strengthen our heart to do[ . . . to ]walk in Your ways [...Blessed is ]the Lord who has made kno[wn to us... ]Amen, Amen.^[30]

Qumran liturgy also used opening blessings, to begin a prayer. This example comes from The Daily Prayers (4Q503):

Usage of opening and closing blessings in rabbinic liturgical benedictions for obligatory prayers is more rigid. As seen in the two examples quoted above (the first Shema blessing and the blessing before Torah reading), they have an opening blessing that begins with a relative pronoun or a participle, and a closing blessing regularly formulated with a participle; both blessings always combine the second person address to God as “You” with third person speech about “Him.” The liturgical collections discovered at Qumran, in contrast, allows for use of the relative or participle clause and the second and/or third person address to God interchangeably for both opening and closing blessings.

A Bridge Between Biblical and Rabbinic Liturgies

The discovery of these ancient liturgical collections allows us to see continuity, developments, and shared liturgical traditions but with various changes among different groups.

The scope and breath of the hundreds of prayers, hymns, and psalms discovered at Qumran go a long way to bridging the gap between biblical and rabbinic prayer. All told, the Scrolls have gifted us a vast body of knowledge about both sectarian and nonsectarian prayer during the Second Temple period, the surprising discovery of prayer at routine times while the Temple cult was operative, and a new understanding of the rabbinic institution of Jewish liturgy after the Temple's destruction in 70 C.E.^[31]