The Thanksgiving Scroll

This is the first commentary on The Thanksgiving Scroll, a collection of first-person prayer poetry from the Dead Sea Scrolls, since the 1960s, and the first since the scroll from Cave 1 was reconstructed. It also addresses scholarly debate around the authorship and function of the collection.

1QHa was one of the first Dead Sea Scrolls discovered by the Bedouin in 1947 and is recognized as one of the most important. Also known as Hodayot, it contains a collection of psalms, addressed to God, in which the author(s) give thanks to God for deliverance, salvation, knowledge, and divine mercy. The Thanksgiving Scroll by Carol A. Newsom and Eileen M. Schuller is the first commentary based on 1QHa as reconstructed by Hartmut Stegemann and Émile Puech, with the revision of 1QHa 1-8 by Michael Johnson. The Hebrew text and the division of the scroll into twenty-four compositions largely follows that established by Stegemann. The Introduction also includes accounts of the history of publication, reconstruction, and interpretation of the Hodayot, as well as information on the material aspects of 1QHa, its paleography, and scribal practices, much of which was not included in the previous edition in Discoveries in the Judaean Desert 40.In this commentary, attention is given primarily to exegetical, literary, and rhetorical issues. In contrast to the earlier distinction between Teacher Psalms and Community Psalms, Newsom and Schuller attribute all the non-Teacher Psalms to the work of various Maskilim, the instructors and liturgical leaders of the Yahad. Internal evidence from 1QHa and comparison with the Hodayot manuscripts from Cave 4 (4QHa-f) provide grounds for identifying three successive editions in the growth of the Hodayot collections that appear to have served different functions. The careful editorial framework provided by Maskil Psalms (cols. 9, 18-19, plus 15:29-16:4) contains numerous intertextual allusions to the Teacher Psalms (cols. 10-17)--which form the core of the collection--and supplies grounds for understanding the Teacher Psalms as compositions by the Teacher of Righteousness.