Words of the Luminaries

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.