The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls: The ... - josephprestonkirk

308 DAILY AND FESTIVAL PRAYERS AT QUMRAN
the rising of the sun is rarely seen as a reminder to praise God. 22
However, the morning prayer at the rising of the sun is a very prevalent
motif in the Qumran prayers with the recurring formula, “When the sun
comes forth to shine upon the earth.” The Qumran community’s custom
of regular corporate morning prayer at sunrise was attested by Josephus:
And as for their piety toward God, it is very extraordinary; for before sunrising
they speak not a word about profane matters, but put up certain
prayers which they have received from their forefathers, as if they made a
supplication for its rising (J.W. 2.8.5).
The fragments provide a few glimpses into the community’s spirituality
and corporate prayer life, including a transitional step in the development
toward regular morning prayer which came to characterize the
practice of later Jewish prayer in the rabbinic period and beyond. 23
Two other issues associated with these prayers in 4Q503 have to do
with liturgical time: (1) What kind of calendar, solar or lunar, do these
prayers presuppose? and (2) Does the liturgical day at Qumran begin in
the evening at sunset or in the morning at sunrise? As to the first question
concerning the solar or lunar calendar at Qumran, some scholars
argue that Qumran worshippers differed from some of their Jewish counterparts
in following an intercalated solar-lunar calendar rather than a
strictly lunar calendar or strictly solar calendar alone. An example of one
non-Qumranic Jewish tradition that followed a strictly solar calendar is
Jub. 6:32–38. Jubilees repudiated as liturgically corrupt any community
who relied on marking time by studying the phases of the moon as in the
lunar calendar: “They will set awry the months and the appointed times
and the sabbaths and the feasts.” 24 But other Jewish traditions which
22. Possible exceptions include Ps 113:3 (“From the rising of the sun to its setting the
name of YHWH is to be praised”), 118:24 (“This is the day that YHWH has made; let us
rejoice and be glad in it”), and Mal 1:11 (“For from the rising of the sun to its setting my
name is great among the nations, and in every place incense is offered to my name…”).
On the time and place of prayer in the Hebrew Bible, see Patrick D. Miller, They Cried to
the Lord: The Form and Theology of Biblical Prayer (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), 48–50.
23. For further reflections on the role of the prayers of 4Q503, see Esther Chazon,
“The Function of the Qumran Prayer Texts: An Analysis of the Daily Prayers
(4Q503),” in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Fifty Years after their Discovery (ed. L. H. Schiffman, E.
Tov, and J. C. VanderKam; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Societyand the Shrine of
the Book, 2000), 217–25.
24. OTP 2:68. Jubilees seems to be among the few extant traditions that reject the
lunar calendar entirely. See Baumgarten, “4Q503 (Daily Prayers), 406; Emil Schürer,
The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (rev. and ed. G. Vermes et al.; 3
vols.; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1973–87), 2:581; and Ben Zion Wacholder, “The
Calendar of Sabbatical Cycles during the Second Temple and the Early Rabbinic
Period,” HUCA 44 (1973): 153–96. See also the study by Shemaryahu Talmon, “The