The Self as Symbolic Space: Constructing Identity and Community at Qumran (Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah)

Annotation This volume investigates critical practices by which the Qumran community constituted itself as a sectarian society. Key to the formation of the community was the reconstruction of the identity of individual members. In this way the "self" became an important symbolic space for the development of the ideology of the sect. Persons who came to experience themselves in light of the narratives and symbolic structures embedded in the community practices would have developed the dispositions of affinity and estrangement necessary for the constitution of a sectarian society. Drawing on various theories of discourse and practice in rhetoric, philosophy, and anthropology, the book examines the construction of the self in two central documents: the Serek ha-Yahad and the Hodayot CONTENTS 8 Acknowledgements 10 1. Communities of Discourse 12 2. Torah, Knowledge, and Symbolic Power: Strategies of Discourse in Second Temple Judaism 34 3. Knowing as Doing: The Social Symbolics of Knowledge in the Two Spirits Treatise of the Serek ha-Yahad 88 4. How to Make a Sectarian: Formation of Language, Self, and Community in the Serek ha-Yahad 102 5. What Do Hodayot Do? Language and the Construction of the Self in Sectarian Prayer 202 6. The Hodayot of the Leader and the Needs of Sectarian Community 298 Conclusions 358 Bibliography 364 Subject Index 376 A 376 B 376 C 376 D 376 E 376 F 376 H 376 I 376 J 376 K 376 L 376 M 376 O 377 P 377 Q 377 R 377 S 377 T 378 W 378 Modern Author Index 379 A 379 B 379 C 379 D 379 F 379 G 379 H 379 J 379 K 379 L 379 M 379 N 380 O 380 P 380 R 380 S 380 T 380 V 380 W 380 Z 380 Passage Index 381 Hebrew Bible 381 Dead Sea Scrolls and the Damascus Document 384 Apocrypha 386 Pseudepigrapha 387 Rabbinic Literature 387 Josephus 387 Philo 387 This volume investigates practices by which the Qumran community constituted itself as a sectarian society by reconstructing the identity of its members. Drawing on discourse and practice theory, the book analyzes the function of the Serek ha-Yahad and the Hodoyot in identity formation.