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Judaism: Dead Sea Scrolls 281other ancient texts, like some of the Qumran Scrolls, suggest that disabilities hadan impact on one's social standing only when they interfered with one's abUity toperform certain social or cultic duties. If this is the case, it wUl greatly enhanceour understanding of the lived experience of disability in the biblical world. Thisbook represents an important contribution to the study of disability in the bibli-cal world. It will serve as a hand y reference volum e for years to com e.

The Social Role of Liturgy in the Religion of the Q umran Com munity, by Rus-sell G. D. Arnold. Studies on the Text of the Desert of Judah 60. Leiden:- Brill,2006. Pp.X + 267 . Gloth. $155.00. ISBN 9004150307.Garol A. Newsom, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia

The texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls, no t u nlike the biblical texts, tantalize schol-ars by providing partial and indirect information about the lives and culture ofthe comm unities that produced and used them . Nowhere is this more so than inthe case of the rituals and liturgies that are described and prescribed in a varietyof often fragmentary documents. Although a number of previous studies haveattempted to analyze liturgical texts from Qumran both in formal and literaryterms and in relation to the development of Jewish liturgy, Arnold's monographis the first full-length study to attempt to situate the Qumran materials in rela-tion to the categories of ritual studies. Even as he sets up his inquiry, however,Arno ld com m ents on what he describes as "a major difficulty of studying ritualon the basis of texts. We have no access to the actual practice of the ritual, andwe have no access to any of the pra ctitioners of the ritual. Wh at w e do have is aframework that places the rituals within a system of ideological and theologicalstructures tha t provide m eaning for them as a coherent system" (13). Despite thisdifficulty, Arnold embraces the challenge set by Lawrence Hoflman, the scholarof Jewish liturgy, who urges that studies move bey ond text-im m anen t approachesto attempt to analyze the texts as evidence of religious practice. Thus the studyof liturgy on the basis of liturgical texts must always proceed uneasily, one eyefocused on the texts as the other eye attempts to look through them to the prac-tices to which they allude.Arnold addresses a number of preliminary issues in the introduction, pro-viding a brief review of previous studies, distinguishing between prayer andliturgy, and explaining the criteria that identify a text as "liturgical" (23-24).He does not, however, attempt to distinguish between the categories "liturgi-cal" and "ritual." Although all liturgies are rituals, ritual would presumably bea broader category, and although Arnold's primary focus is on liturgical texts,he often makes reference to behaviors that are ritual but perhaps not liturgi-

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282 Review of Biblical Literaturethose approaches that "consider ritual as a type of language, a complex meansof com munication" (9), and he c omplemen ts the ritual studies perspectives withsome attention to speech act theory. Although in the introduction he outlinesfive "layers of mea ning" (16) that liturgy may have, in the bod y of the work thisfocus on meaning and the communicative force of ritual sometimes seems tofade into to a simpler social functionalist approach. In general, there seems tobe an ambiguous tension between hermeneutical and functionalist assumptionsin the work that is never quite raised to self-conscious reflection. Nevertheless,Arnold's use of Gatherine Bell's six ritual categories (rites of passage, feasts andfasts, calendrical rites, rites of affliction, political rites, and rites of communion)works quite well for organizing and und erstan ding the liturgical materials fromQumran .The other issue that Arnold addresses in the introduction is the difficult oneof which texts to consider. Arnold explains the criteria by which he attempts todistinguish texts of Qu m ran provenance. But rather than restrict his study to justthose texts, Arnold also includes "liturgical texts that o riginated outside, but werelikely used as liturgy by the c om mu nity" (23). Although one can unders tand whyArnold m akes this decision, it becom es particularly difficult to analyze the m ean-ing and function of such adopted texts in the absence of the kind of information aparticipant observer would be able to gather. For this reason I flnd his discussionof Qumran texts more illuminating than the analysis of non-Qumran texts. Theother decision Arnold makes is to restrict his inquiry into the life of the Yahaditself at Q um ran, avoiding the difficult question of how the co mmu nity describedin the Serek ha-Yahad is related to that described in the Dam ascus Do cum ent.

Ghapter 1, "Go mmunity S tructure," makes use of Mary Douglas's "group andgrid" model, testing her conclusion that societies with particular ritual densityare characterized by both strong group and strong grid against the characteristicsof the Qumran community. Arnold demonstrates the strong separatist ideologyof the Yahad, its corporate identity and hierarchy, its strong rule orientation, andits high expectations for righteousness and holiness, and its preoccupation witha closely regulated calendar and the control of speech. In one regard, however,which curiously Arnold does not discuss, the Q um ran comm unity's cosmology isthe opposite of the "anthropomorphic; non-dualistic" one that Douglass associ-ates with such strong group/grid societies.The bulk of the book is taken up with the analysis of the six categories ofritual and liturgical texts. Ghapter 2, "Rites of Passage," is perhaps the mostimportant one. As Arnold observes, the sectarian rites of passage are not thoseconcerned with life passages but with entrance into and exclusion from thecommunity itself and the covenant renewal ceremony described in the Serek

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Judaism: Dead Sea Scrolls 283

blessings and curses, [4] entrance into the serekh, [5] puriflcation and instruction,and [6] rebuke and dismissal" (54). Preparation actually refers to the proceduresdescribed in column 6 of the Serek ha-Yahad and so is not temporally a part ofthe ritual of the covenant renewal but a part of the larger ritual process. The nextthree sections of the ritual are those described in lQ S 1:16-2:25 and are assumedby many to be a description of the ceremony. More problematic, however, isArnold's reconstruction of the fifth stage of the rite, "preparation and instruc-tion," in relation to lQS 2:25-4:26. It is not clear from the text itself that lQS2:25-3:12 is part of the description of the ritual. It could rather be a hortatoryreflection prompted by the description of the ceremony. That the Two Spirits trea-tise was read during the covenant-renewal cerem ony certainly needs to be arguedrather than assumed (74), especially since it is generally considered to be a sepa-rate document included in some but not all recensions of the Serek ha-Yahad.Even m ore problematic is reconstructing the conclusion of the covenant-renewalceremony as consisting of "rebuke and dismissal" on the basis of references tosuch practices in 4QDamascusa.

The methodological problem that surfaces in this part of the boo k is the rela-tionship between a text that refers to and partially describes a ritual and whatactually happened in the community. Arnold moves too quickly to reconstructthe ritual without having rigorously analyzed the nature and rhetoric of lQS itselfEven what appears to be a prescriptive account of the ceremony may have beenshaped by the rhetorical purposes of the text in which it is embedded. Neverthe-less, the chapter is rich with analyses that inform our understanding of ritualizedlanguage at Qumran and the way in which it served to construct a community,such as Arnold's discussion of repentance as a boun dary issue (58-5 9), the trans-formation of the function of confessional language necessitated by deterministictheology (64-6 6), the role of instruction in reframing m em bers' language into themovement's ritual discourse (73), and the perpetual liminality that is implied inthe an nual repetition of the covenant renewal for all m em bers (81).In chapter 3, "Feasts and Fasts," Arnold moves more deftly among differentkinds of evidence, including archaeological evidence, to sketch a general pictureof the signiflcance of ritualized meals at Qumran. Recognizing that some of thetexts may not pertain in the flrst instance to the Yahad (lQS 6:lc-8) or to thepresent (lQSa 2:17-22), he nevertheless makes a good case for which aspectsof these descriptions can give information about the meaning and function ofmeals. Arnold sees as particularly important the way in which ritual aspects ofthe meals reinforced the priority of the priest and the hierarchical ord ering of thecom m unity (94-96 , 99). W ith many o thers, he rejects the n otion that the m ealsserved as a substitute for sacriflce, stressing instead an anticipation of the escha-

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28 4 Review of Biblical Literatu reThe chapter on "Galendrical Rites," chapter 4, is a lengthy treatment ofnumerous texts, both those considered to be of Qumran provenance (4QMMT,

4QM ishmarot A and B, lQS 9:26-10:4, lQ H a 2 0:4-9,4Q Daily Prayers, 4QSongsof the Sabbath Sacriflce) and those that were composed elsewhere but perhapsused at Qumran (l lQPsa David's Gompositions, l lQPsa Hymn to the Greator,4QWords of the Luminaries, 4QFestival Prayers), and others whose provenancecannot be determined. Arnold begins his treatment of these liturgical texts witha reflection on G atherine Bell's obse rvation that ca lendrical rites "can be attem ptsto control na ture, or to harm onize with it" (107). Through his analyses A rnoldconvincingly demonstrates how strenuously the Qumran community sought toharmonize their life and worship with the structures of cosmic time. Beyondthat, the coordination of their worship with the worship of the angels is presentin num erou s texts (112, 130, 143), a pheno m eno n that should not be confusedwith imitation of angelic praise, which the Qumran community apparently didnot practice (144). Because so many texts require treatment, Arnold is not ableto delve deeply into the mean ing and function of each. One of his no teworthyconclusions, however, is the remarkable lack of monthly rituals, which he attri-butes to the im pact of the prom inence of the solar calendar. Thus, the week formsthe basic structuring unit of time, and, "in con trast, a month -especially a solarm on th -h as no special authority in relation to creation" (157).

In chapter 5, "Rites of Affliction," Arnold glosses Bell's category by notingthat these rituals "alleviate ... anxiety by addressing disorder in the cosmos,whether the result of demons, evU spirits, iUness, sins or natural circumstancesof impurity" (159). He considers two categories of texts. First are the curses (lQS2:4-18; 4QBerakot; 4QGurses) and apotropaic prayers and incantations (4QSongsof the Maskil; 4Q560; llQapocryPsa; 4QExorcism ar) that presume a dualisticworldview and target either the human followers of Belial or the evil spiritualand demonic forces themselves. These rituals function as boundary protection,as empowerment, and as weapons in the cosmic battle. But they also serve todraw attentio n to the role of the power of speech itself and so can be usefuUy seentogether with the attention to control of speech that appears in other Qumrantexts. The second set of texts to be con sidered do not directly assum e a du alisticworld view but are the puriflcation rites that address either speciflc impurities(4QTo horot a nd 4QR itual of Puriflcation) or those th at are related to the cyclesof time (4QPuriflcation Liturgy). The signiflcance of the former for a study onthe social function of ritual has to do with the ways in which these texts, althoughfocused on the purity of the individual, nevertheless are related to he need of theYahad to create a pure and holy com mu nity.Political rites, that is "rituals designed to reinforce the social structures of

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Judaism: Dead Sea Scrolls 285serve to reinforce priestly authority, including several that are rituals for a future,eschatological com mu nity (e.g., lQM , lQSa , lQS b). The relevance of the Liturgyof the Tongues of Fire (4Q375, 376; 1Q29) to Arnold's discussion is questiona ble,since, as he no tes, it is of uncertain provenance and is a M osaic pseud epigraph on.Both the texts that prescribe eschatological rituals and those set in Mosaic times raise in an acute form the issue that goes largely unexp lored in this work: by whattheoretical means scholars should assess the social function of texts about ritualsthat may well not correspond to rituals actually practiced, that is, the social func-tion of textualizing rituals.

The book concludes in chapter 7 with an examination of rites of exchange andcommunion. Here Arnold shows how ritual theory can shed important light onthe signiflcance of such things as the exchange of knowledge within the com-mun ity. He also indicates how the Yahad's predestinarian theology requires somenuancing of ritual theory's understanding of the transactional nature of rites ofexchange and communion, since the community's prayers do not ask for thingsfrom God. In his discussion of the Hodayot Arnold argues for a liturgical usein connection with the annual covenant-renewal ceremony but also stresses thatthey served to mediate a common experience among the members of the com-munity, separating the m em bers from outsiders and establishing com m unity w iththe divine realm.

In 77ie Social Role of Liturgy in the Religion of the Qum ran Com munity Arnoldund ertakes an e norm ous task, one that can not be wholly accomplished in a singlebook. There are two trade-offs that the project necessarily had to confront: onehaving to do with breadth versus depth; the other with exegetical versus theo-retical focus. In each case Arnold opts for the former. By focusing on breadthof coverage, Arnold is able to demonstrate vividly the "ritual density" of life atQumran and to suggest the powerful social force of such a ritualized form oflife. This is an im po rtant con tribution , since mo st previous studies have focusedonly on particular texts or types of texts. Although Arnold's research questionsare generally guided by ritual theory, he opts to focus m ore on exegetical ratherthan theoretical issues, since the interpretation of many of these difficult texts isoften contested territory. Arnold is a careful, well-informed, and judicious guidethrough these treacherous waters, often offering important new insights of hisown. The issues that he has opted not to pursue particularly th e interesting issueof the social functions of discourse about ritualsare questions that one hopesother scholars will take up.

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