Angela Kim Harkins

The Community Hymns Classification: A Proposal for Further Differentiation

The hodayot scroll from Cave 1 is often cited as one of the classic examples of sectarian literature found at Qumran, yet this conceptualization ignores the great variety of language and style found throughout these compositions. Perhaps a refined understanding of the different literary types within the hodayot scroll can help lead scholars to a better understanding of the relationship between it and other writings from Qumran. This paper proposes that the specific group of hodayot known as the Community Hymns may be further differentiated into two types: those that show strong alignment with the yahad and those that do not show strong alignment.

Theological Attitudes Toward the Scriptural Text: Lessons from the Qumran and Syriac Exegetical Traditions

The author examines how current textual-critical views and premodern attitudes toward the scriptural text offer todays theologians helpful perspectives on the Scriptures. The Qumran and Syriac exegetical traditions provide premodern examples of how interpretive communities of faith can read the Scriptures in a way that is both attentive to their literary form and richly theological.

Another Look at the Cave 1 Hodayot: Was CH I Materially Part of the Scroll 1QHodayota?

This essay builds on the monumental material reconstruction of the Cave 1 hodayot scroll (1QHa) first proposed by Hartmut Stegemann and brought to completion by Eileen Schuller in the critical edition available in DJD 40, which is, and will remain, an invaluable scholarly resource. At the same time, the proliferation of scholarly editions of the Cave 1 hodayot projects to modern readers an illusory material unity that the Cave 1 hodayot did not enjoy in antiquity. This study highlights some curious aspects of the unprovenanced Cave 1 hodayot, especially as they pertain to our understanding of the literary collection known popularly as the first group of Community Hymns (= CH I), and offers a possible scenario to account for the material state of the hodayot at the time of its abandonment.

The Odes of Solomon as Solomonic Pseudepigrapha

This article examines the Odes of Solomons ancient attribution to the biblical king, a decidedly overlooked aspect of these texts. The special vibrancy of traditions about Solomons powers over demons and his authority in many spiritual matters during the Second Temple period can be a fruitful context for helping us to understand how ancient readers understood these texts as Solomonic pseudepigrapha.

The Emotional Re-Experiencing of the Hortatory Narratives Found in the Admonition of the Damascus Document

This article proposes that the emotional re-experiencing of the hortatory narratives found in the Admonition section of the Damascus Document (cols. 1–8; 19–20) may have been instrumental in preparing the community for an optimal reception of the laws that follow. The sectarian’s imaginative and egocentric re-enactment of the negatively valenced emotions in these vignettes could have made foundational events of covenant re-making accessible with the vividness of first-hand experiences. The generation of self-diminishment that arises from re-experiencing these negative emotions could have staged an experience of God’s immediacy, thereby replicating the conditions of divine encounter associated with the covenantal reception of laws.

Who is the Teacher of the Teacher Hymns? Re-Examining the Teacher Hymns Hypothesis Fifty Years Later

The coherence of the Teacher Hymns collection was an important observation of the early scholars, and their historical-critical approaches to the texts led to later studies that attempted to either further the Teacher Hymn Hypothesis or identify possible candidates for the Teacher of Righteousness himself. In this chapter, the author reexamines the Teacher Hymns Hypothesis, which is commonly associated with the compositions in 1QHa 10-17. The chapter discusses and critiques the arguments in favor of the view that the Teacher Hymns were composed by a historical figure, the Teacher of Righteousness known from other Qumran texts. It concludes by proposing a rhetorical understanding of the Teacher Hymns. Keywords:Qumran texts; Teacher Hymns Hypothesis

The Performative Reading of the Hodayot: The Arousal of Emotions and the Exegetical Generation of Texts*

This article examines two anonymous Hodayot (1QH 11.6-19 and 13.22—15.8) from the perspective of performance theory (method acting), post-structuralist understandings of subjectivity, and recent studies on the emotions. It is here proposed that when a reader was expected to read performatively, he—the readerly audience is likely to have been predominantly male—was not only expected to imitate the behaviors that are described in the text, but to re-enact the specific emotions that are aroused by it. In this way the reader could hope to form the appropriate subjectivity that is a necessary precondition for religious experience. In the case of the Qumran hodayot, the reading of 1QH 11.6-19 led to the exegetical generation of 1QH 13.22—15.8. If a text is rightly performed, the appropriate emotional signs will be exhibited in the reader and observed by the community (blushing, tears, perspiration, etc.). In this proposal, the reader’s physical display of emotion authenticates the new text that is produced.