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The Fate of "I" and "Thou" in Second Temple and Early Judaic Prayer

Tue, December 18, 8:30 to 10:00am, Seaport Hotel & World Trade Center, Cityview 2 Ballroom

Abstract

Studies of prayer across the Second Temple and post-Temple periods reveal changes in textual features, prayer behavior, and even theology. Marc Brettler finds evidence in Books 4 and 5 of the Psalter of co-existing groups fostering communal identity, each emphasizing its own theology, central site, and nation-founding narrative. Judith Newman, focusing on prose prayer, finds increases in length, citations of historical narratives, and interpretive commentary. For William Morrow, prose penitential prayers signal Judaism's entry into the "Axial Age," monotheistic worship of a transcendent deity.

These approaches tend to idealize prayer as spontaneous utterances of an individual "I" in a moment of crisis directly addressing a divine "Thou." Newman concedes that prose prayer may not have been spontaneous but does frame psalms as formal, mediated, ritualistic—by implication, inauthentic. While Morrow does view the psalms as prayers, he concentrates mainly on laments. He does not look for evidence of a shift over time in human-divine relations from individual toward communal identity; rather he views penitential prayer as a phenomenon that supersedes and eventually suppresses the more personal rhetoric of complaint against God in first-person laments.

In this talk, I draw on textual and rhetorical analysis to reassert the significance of the psalms to the emergence and shaping of Judaic liturgy. First, I argue for recognizing first-person psalms as public prayers that do reflect individual exigencies. These psalms deploy sophisticated strategies to persuade God to intervene and human spectators to reevaluate the speaker's standing. Second, I investigate how the use of direct address between human and divine speakers reflect differing positionalities across the Psalter. The evidence I draw on includes analysis of grammatical subjects, verb inflections, and the use of vocatives. Finally, by examing the types of actions that divine and human speakers call upon the other to perform, I challenge the notion that the absence of penitential laments in the Psalter signals an absence of penitential discourse in individual or communal ritual practice.

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