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Ancient Jewish Prayers and Emotions Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature Studies

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Ancient Jewish Prayers and Emotions Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature Studies Ancient Jewish Prayers and Emotions Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature Studies Edited by Friedrich V. Reiterer, Beate Ego and Tobias Nicklas Volume 26 Ancient Jewish Prayers and Emotions Emotions associated with Jewish prayer in and around the Second Temple period Edited by Stefan C. Reif and Renate Egger-Wenzel An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libra- ries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high quality books Open Access. More information about the initiative can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License. For details go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. ISBN 978-3-11-037429-2 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-036908-3 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-038608-0 ISSN 1865-1666 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2015 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Printing: CPI books GmbH, Leck ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com Contents Stefan C. Reif The Place of Prayer in Early Judaism | 1 Christine Abart Moments of Joy and Lasting Happiness | 19 Kristin De Troyer “Sounding Trumpets with Loud Shouts” Emotional Responses to Temple Building: Ezra and Esdras | 41 Simone M. Paganini Adjusting the Narrative Emotions and the Prayer of Moses (Jub 1:19–21) | 59 Thomas R. Elßner Emotions in Jerusalem’s Prayer: Baruch and Lamentations | 71 Beate Ego Prayer and Emotion in the Septuagint of Esther | 83 Michael W. Duggan 1 Maccabees: Emotions of Life and Death in Narrative and Lament | 95 Friedrich V. Reiterer Praying to God Passionately: Notes on the Emotions in 2 Maccabees | 117 Núria Calduch-Benages Emotions in the Prayer of Sir 22:27–23:6 | 145 Markus Witte Emotions in the Prayers of the Wisdom of Solomon | 161 Barbara Schmitz Judith and Holofernes: An Analysis of the Emotions in the Killing Scene (Jdt 12:10–13:9) | 177 Renate Egger-Wenzel Sarah’s Grief to Death (Tob 3:7–17) | 193 VI | Contents Dalia Marx The Prayer of Susanna (Daniel 13) | 221 Jonathan Ben-Dov Language, Prayer and Prophecy: 1 Enoch, the Dead Sea Scrolls and 1 Corinthians | 239 Moshe Lavee From Emotions to Legislation: Asenath’s Prayer and Rabbinic Literature | 259 Ursula Schattner-Rieser Emotions and Expressions of Emotion as a Didactic Guide as to How to Pray: Berakhot in the Aramaic Prayers of Qumran | 273 Angela Kim Harkins A Phenomenological Study of Penitential Elements and Their Strategic Arousal of Emotion in the Qumran Hodayot (1QHa cols. 1[?]–8) | 297 Asaf Gayer The Centrality of Prayer and Stability of Trust. An Analysis of the Hymn of the Maskil in 1QS IX, 25b–XI, 15a | 317 Oda Wischmeyer Prayer and Emotion in Mark 14:32–42 and Related Texts | 335 Eve-Marie Becker Κράζειν and the Concept of “Emotional Prayer” in Earliest Christianity: Rom 8:15 and Acts 7:60 in Their Context(s) | 351 Index of subjects | 369 Index of references | 372 Index of persons | 404 Stefan C. Reif The Place of Prayer in Early Judaism 1 Introduction It is a pleasure and privilege to open this collection of essays by attempting to set them in the historical context of the ancient past, as well as preparing some of the ground for the building of the new critical theories of the present and the future. In that respect, my function here is akin to that of the Roman god Janus. As is well known, Janus was the god of beginnings and ends, as well as of time, and he is usually represented as having two faces, one looking backwards to the past and the other forwards to the future. How then is it best to approach this somewhat daunting and challenging task? Given the title of this paper, and indeed the overall subject of the current volume, it is clear that the broad theme that requires attention is the theory and practice of prayer as they developed within the overall history of the Jews in the period that led up to the rise of Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism. I first propose to assess the degree to which the past 120 years have witnessed methodological change and innovative analy- sis and to allude to the role played by the discoveries from the Cairo Genizah in such scholarly developments. I shall then offer some remarks about the contro- versial nature of historical analysis in the treatment of Jewish liturgical evolu- tion and point to the bibliographical studies that can now help us in our re- search in this field. It will also, of course, be necessary to mention the extent to which we, who specialize in the subject being discussed, are indebted to the scholars of the Dead Sea Scrolls for the materials and the interpretations that they have made available to us, as indeed to the founders and leaders of the International Society for Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature for the con- ferences and publications that they have so successfully sponsored in the past thirteen years. Moving from the past to the present and the future, I shall make reference to the newest themes and the way forward for scholarship at least in in the short term. If by that point I have achieved my stated objective, readers will then be better equipped to read and absorb the important studies that are included in the body of this volume. 2 | Stefan C. Reif 2 Earlier perspectives 2.1 Jewish Encyclopedia If we are to identify the kind of view about Jewish prayer in the Hebrew Bible and in the immediately pre-Christian period that was widely held by learned individuals at the beginning of the twentieth century, it is not unreasonable to examine what was on offer in the The Jewish Encyclopedia that was published in New York in 1906. The editors enlisted the assistance of many leading scholars, but also of local rabbis who had trained in seminaries as well as universities, and therefore provided a broad overview of what the thinking Jew had in mind when asked to define some outstanding notion or custom. Rabbi Dr Maurice H. Harris (d. 1930) was the spiritual leader of the Reform synagogue Temple Israel in Harlem at that time and contributed the article on “Prayer” to the Encyclo- pedia.1 Before an article by Judah Eisenstein offering a practical guide to the content and practice of traditional rabbinic prayer in ancient, medieval and modern times, Harris had some comments to make about the earlier origins of that expression of religiosity as described in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament: The building of the Temple naturally invited public prayer… It may be inferred that orga- nized service was sufficiently well established in the days of the prophets of the eighth and seventh centuries to have drifted into conventionality (comp. Isa. i. 15, xxix. 13, Iviii. 5). That Daniel “kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God” (vi. 10), and that Ps. lv. 17 speaks of prayer “evening and morning, and at noon”, would indicate the institution of triple daily services, though I Chron. xxiii. 30 specifies only morning and evening. So, too, the mention of grace before and after meat in the New Testament (Matt. xv. 36; Acts xxvii. 37) leads to the inference that such a prayer became customary before the close of the Old Testament canon. For Harris, then, as for many of his contemporaries, public prayer was a feature of Temple times, communal prayer was already “conventional” in the days of the prophets, institutional daily services existed in the post-exilic period, and statutory graces before and after meals were already recited in the time of the Hebrew Bible. While a pulpit rabbi apparently gave little credit to the Second Temple pe- riod for promoting innovative liturgical development of any significance, it might be thought that those of a more critical bent would surely have seen matters || 1 JE 10, 164–165. The Place of Prayer in Early Judaism | 3 differently. Ludwig Blau (1861–1936) was a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Budapest and succeeded the great Wilhelm Bacher as the Director of that institution from 1914. In 1911 he founded the periodical HaZofeh which became so central to scientific Jewish studies (Wissenschaft des Judentums), and edited it until 1931. He contributed the entry on “Liturgy” to the Encyclopedia.2 In addition to what Harris had written, Blau added details about the Temple, Levites, Psalms, and the Ma‘amadot, an institution which allowed those not directly involved in Temple activity to gather for some sort of liturgical cere- mony.3 Again however, somewhat remarkably, no significance was attached by him to the Second Temple period, nor to Hellenistic literature, and his discus- sion focussed only on the Hebrew Bible and talmudic literature. 2.2 Elbogen The doyen of the study of Jewish liturgy in the first half of the twentieth century was undoubtedly Ismar Elbogen (1874–1943) who also represented scientific Jewish studies and taught at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Juden- tums in Berlin before having to emigrate to the United States during the Nazi period. With a keen eye for the historical, Elbogen clearly had a greater appre- ciation than his predecessors of the fact that the Second Temple period might have had something important to tell him in his field of specialization.
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