The Performance of Blessing as Imitation of Divine Beings

Abstract

This essay examines Qumran texts that not only perform blessing but also reflect on the activity of blessing itself, and thereby offer an opportunity to better understand the urge and necessity behind the growth of liturgical cycles that generate traditions of prayer. The paper looks at three texts, the hymns of the maśkîl, the Hymn to the Creator, and 4Q408, in which the performance of blessing is presented as acknowledgment of the creator through the lens of primordial time and the actualization of creation narratives. The essay argues that the way in which divine beings are imagined as perceiving and responding to the act of creation forms a model that liturgical performers emulate in order to approach as much as possible the holiness of these higher beings. This example demonstrates the interaction between interpretation and performance and their impact on the emergence and growth of textual traditions, both oral and written, in the Second Temple period.