Creation Imagery in Qumran Hymns and Prayers

Abstract

The hymns and prayers found in the Dead Sea Scrolls provide examples of the ways Second Temple Jewish poets both preserved and adapted earlier traditions. This study explores one specific motif, biblical creation imagery, to examine how it is utilised across the corpus of Qumran hymns and prayers. By observing the deployment of creation imagery in liturgical and non-liturgical texts, both those composed at Qumran and those composed prior to the founding of the community, this study demonstrates the ways that Qumran creation imagery echoes the biblical models. Further, this study shows that creation imagery is deployed in ways that go beyond the biblical models only in the Qumran hymns and prayers which serve an instructional purpose. These didactic hymns and prayers provide examples of how some Second Temple Jewish writers drew upon earlier, honoured traditions about creation and creatively adapted them to meet the needs of the day.