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Words of the Luminaries

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Discovered at Qumran and comprising a prayer for each day of the week, the Words of the Luminaries offers new perspectives on prayer during the Second Temple period and on Jewish and Christian litu...
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  • 07 October 2026
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Discovered at Qumran and comprising a prayer for each day of the week, the Words of the Luminaries offers new perspectives on prayer during the Second Temple period and on Jewish and Christian liturgy after the temple’s destruction in 70 CE. Dated well before the sectarian settlement at Qumran, it constitutes our oldest surviving evidence of daily, communal prayer. This volume furnishes the first complete reconstruction and critical edition of this work, also featuring an extensive commentary. Advanced computer technologies and digital images of the scrolls, as well as literary, scribal, and material methods, enabled reconstructing the largest manuscript (4Q504). 4Q504’s early paleographical date is significant for the implications drawn in this volume’s essays, including for the work’s historical context, the sectarian Yahad’s reception of nonsectarian texts, scriptural use and interpretation in prayers, and uncovering routine communal prayer while the temple was operative.
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Price: $224.00
Publisher: Brill
Imprint: Brill
Series: Dead Sea Scrolls Editions
Publication Date: 07 October 2026
ISBN: 9789004759367
Format: Hardcover
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Esther G. Chazon, Professor Emerita, Hebrew Literature Department, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She served as Director of the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature, and has published extensively on Second Temple period literature.