Meaning and Context in the Thanksgiving Hymns: Linguistic and Rhetorical Perspectives on a Collection of Prayers from Qumran

by Trine Bjïrnung Hasselbalch

Overview

Hasselbalch asserts that current theories about the social background of Thanksgiving Hymns are unable to explain its heterogeneous character. Instead the author suggests a reading strategy that leaves presumptions about the underlying social contexts aside to instead consider the collection's hybridity as a clue to understanding the collection as a whole. Hasselbalch applies Systemic Functional Linguistics to four Hodayot compositions which show signs of hybridity. Analysis reveals that the speaker in some of the so-called leader hymns as well as in compositions not normally designated leader hymns appears to have the role of a mediator in the agency of God-a feature that distinguishes the hodayot from biblical psalms. This characteristic can be seen as a common denominator that unifies the collection.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781628370546
Publisher:	SBL Press
Publication date:	03/05/2015
Series:	Early Judaism and Its Literature , #42
Pages:	326
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.73(d)