Prayer in Later Periods

Prayer was a major liturgical component of the synagogue service. Synagogues served as surrogates for the temple, providing a place where people living too far from the temple could say prayers. Synagogue services were structured around readings from the Law and the Prophets, along with ceremonial prayers offered by the attendant. In the case of the recitation of the Amidah, the attendant read the prayers aloud while the congregation responded, “Amen” (Bradshaw, Daily Prayer, 16–22). So much was the synagogue identified with prayer that by the time of Josephus, the term for “prayer” (προσευχή, proseuchē) had also become an idiom for “place of prayer” (i.e., synagogue; Greeven, “προσ εύχομαι, pros euchomai, προσευχή, proseuchē,” 2:807–808).

Although they broke from the worship of the Temple ministry, the Qumran community retained standardization in its liturgical and communal prayers. Members began and ended the day with prayer, perhaps with the recitation of the Shema (1QS 10:1–2). Prayers were written and standardized, and several collections of prayers, thanksgiving psalms, and blessings have been found among the Dead Sea scrolls, including Daily Prayers (4Q503), Thanksgiving Psalms (1QHa and 4QHa—f), Blessings for Purification (4Q512, 4Q414), in addition to prayers prescribed for the community in other collections (Schuller, “Prayer in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” 66–88).

The increasing standardization of prayer in Israel’s history does not mean that Jews no longer offered spontaneous, heartfelt prayers (see Heinemann, Prayer in the Talmud, 37–76). The formal prayers were designed to lead and instruct the community in its prayer activity, and there is every reason to suppose that personal, heart-felt prayers continued to be offered when the people dispersed from their communal worship. Instruction about the recitation of daily prayers included warnings like that of Simeon: “Be careful to recite the Shema and to pray the Amidah. But when you pray, do not allow your prayer to become a fixed mechanical task” (Avot 2:18). Printed prayers from this era are formal, but “there is also a large dimension of prayer that is quite nonpublic, individual, private, oral, and spontaneous” (Miller, They Cried to the Lord, 6).