Thanksgiving Hymns
The Thanksgiving Scroll or Hodayot was one of the first seven Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in 1947 by the Bedouin. The scroll gets its name from the recurring use of the phrase “I thank you” in many of the poems, thus ‘Thanksgiving Scroll’ or Hodayot (the Hebrew word referring to ‘thanks’ or ‘thanksgiving’). Other names include Thanksgiving Hymns,Thanksgiving Psalms,Hymns Scroll and Scroll of Hymns.
The main scroll found in 1947 is designated 1QHa. Other fragments of this text have been found in Caves 1 and 4 (1Q35, 4Q427-432). But even when these readings are added to 1QHa, there is still a substantial amount of text missing. Scholars can only speculate how many hymns/poems/psalms were included in this work, but it is fairly certain that more than half of the psalms have survived, though not always in complete form.
The style of the hymns is so similar to that of the Old Testament that scholars have described it as a “mosaic of Old Testament Texts”. Like the biblical “psalms of lament”, they employ intimate and personal language. This leads some scholars to believe that the speaker in this scroll is a specific individual, perhaps the Teacher of Righteousness mentioned in the Damascus Document and the Habbakuk Pesher.
The content varies from poem to poem but there are certainly overriding themes: first and foremost the scroll talks about and to God and is usually contrasted with the weakness, dependency, unworthiness and wretchedness of the human condition (thereby exalting God’s power and perfection even more). Other main themes include: salvation of the just and destruction of the wicked, gratitude for divine insight, personal (?) accounts of exile/persecution (and God delivering the speaker from such plights). To use the last subject as an example, here is a quote from the text showing both how personal the language is and the thanks awarded to God for his mercy:
“the wicked of the people rush against me with their afflictions, and all the day long they crush my soul. But You, O my God, turn the tempest to a whisper, and the life of the distressed You have brought to safety as a bird from the snare and as prey from the power of lions” (1QH, Col. 13 lines 17-19).
There are several theories regarding how the Hodayot were used. Some believe they were daily prayers, or a moral instruction booklet or even war songs sung after a victory. Menahem Mansoor holds that The Thanksgiving scroll was a private psalter for a select group within a community that modeled the correct way to praise God for deliverance. Svend Holm-Nielsen believes that the Hodayot served a liturgical purpose as hymns sung or recited during certain ceremonies, such as the initiation ceremonies described in the Community Rule (1QS) and the War Scroll (1QM).
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