Prayer, the Divine, and the Human Self at Qumran

Scrolls scholars have been overly preoccupied with re-editing and retranslating texts with little attention to how these texts were used by the people of the past and how these prayers functioned in the life of the community. In contrast to early understandings of the people of the Scrolls, which tended to view them in a monolithic way, scholars today consider them with greater complexity. Continuing this trajectory, this chapter draws attention to the embodied aspects of reading by examining the prayers from Qumran with the help of anthropology and cross-cultural understandings of the self. It challenges the purely discursive study of the prayers from the Dead Sea Scrolls—which prioritizes thought or belief—by redirecting attention to how bodily practices generate meaning and experiences.