CHAPTER TWO

THE TAMID SERVICE

The Tamid service was the most frequently performed public sacrifice in Jerusalem. References to the service are found scattered through­ out the biblical and extra-biblical material, in the three divisions of the , in apocryphal, pseudepigraphical, and sectarian writings, in classical Jewish authors such as Philo and Josephus, and in later rabbinic remembrances, including an entire tractate of the Mishnah. For the most part, these references are fairly short, usually no more than a verse or two. Taken together, they provide exten­ sive information on the service, yet at the same time, leave gaps and create puzzles about the performance of the service and its devel­ opment over time. This chapter reviews these references and the issues they raise. A picture of the service and its significance is built up from them. Since the central interest in this work is the psalms of the Tamid service, particular attention is paid to texts bearing on their identification and performance. The plurality of references to the Tamid ritual requires some form of organization to facilitate presentation. There are several ways in which ritual references might be grouped. For example, one might follow the supposed temporal order of the writing, from the earlier documents to the later, or a canonical order, starting with the . A third way will be utilized here. Ritual texts may be divided into the categories of descriptive and prescriptive texts. Prescriptive texts layout in a legislative manner regulations concerning the perform­ ance of a certain ritual. Descriptive texts describe in narrative or formulaic form the performance of the ritual at a certain, possibly typical, occasion. This distinction is employed here to classify the rit­ ual texts for the Tamid service. l The two categories, however, do

1 The distinction was introduced for biblical texts by Baruch Levine and devel­ oped by Anson Rainey. See Baruch Levine, "Ugaritic Descriptive Rituals," Jes 17 (1963): 105-11; idem, "The Descriptive Tabernacle Texts of the Pentateuch," JAGS THE TAMID SERVICE 13 not span all relevant texts. Another category is also required. References to the Tamid service often also occur in non-ritual texts, as part of a narrative where the T amid service is not the primary focus of interest, but is included to support some aspect of the main story line, for example as a marker of the time of day, or to add color to the story. There are enough of these non-ritual texts to form a category of their own. They yield information about details and vari­ ations in the service, as well as attitudes to it. Descriptive texts are considered first; they give a feel for what the service involved. This category also yields the most information about the service. Next prescriptive texts are treated and then non-ritual texts. After this presentation of the source material there is a brief discussion of the history of the service, a topic that has been con­ sidered by several scholars. The fifth section in the chapter concerns the identification of the seven psalms which were sung at the service. The terms Tamid, Tamid service, Tamid ritual, and references to the daily worship will be used interchangeably here. In fact, as will be seen, the Tamid service was not one ritual, but a complex of rit­ uals performed differently in the morning and afternoon (or early evening). At their core lay the sacrifice of a lamb and its offering as a burnt offering, an (olah, on the of burnt sacrifices. 2 That process itself might have taken over one hour. Other ritual activi­ ties were also carried out before, during and after the sacrifice and offering. Those rituals also may be considered part of the Tamid worship service and are treated as such in the descriptive accounts in the Mishnah and Ben Sira. A psalm was sung at the close of the service each day.

85 (1965): 307-18; Anson Rainey, "The Order of Sacrifices in the Old Testament Ritual Texts," Bib 51 (1970): 485-98. The differences between the categories may be seen in a comparison between the descriptive account of sacrifices found in Num 7:12-88 and the prescriptive account of Num 28-30, both of which, according to Levine, are reworkings of the same archival material ("Tabernacle Texts," 314-18). 2 On the performance of this offering in the late Period, see Anders Huitgard, "The Burnt-Offering in Early Jewish Religion: Sources, Practices and Purpose," in Gifts to the Gods: Proceedings of the Uppsala Symposium 1985 (ed. Tullia Linders and Gulliig Nordquist; BOREAS 15; Uppsala: University of Uppsala, 1987), 83-91.