Efficacious prayer and revelation: two case studies in second temple Judaism

Thesis

This thesis investigates how prayer was used in the Hellenistic-Jewish period to understand or change history through the relationship between prayer, revelation, and writing. In biblical scholarship, different generic categories have been approached as separate types of literature. This can result in texts that open up our understanding of the Hellenistic-Jewish world as being typecast into rigid genre boundaries. In this thesis, I combine a collection of texts from the Hellenistic-Jewish period to expand our understanding of ancient Judaism.

While previous scholarship has read texts, such as Nehemiah and Daniel, according to their generic categories (i.e., history and apocalypse, respectively), I bring these texts together as they both participate in a larger structure of reading. This thesis offers a narrative of the relationship between text, history, and liturgy. In this thesis, I reorient the discussion to consider how prayer shows scripturalization and second order thinking and expresses history. As it does this, prayer and the broader reading practices that accompany it become essential to the daily renewal of human beings, becoming generative within texts and providing an outlet for growth and regeneration. In doing so, prayer is a part of the multifaceted (re)creation of time.

This thesis challenges the binary nature of texts by exploring the convergence of prayer, revelation, and writing. It introduces a new approach by highlighting the central role of revelation in interpreting these texts. Prayer leads to moments of revelation, which turn into writtenness and form a hermeneutical lens to understand how prayer interacts with time and history.

Authors: Wisialowski, S

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-rbang4orq
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: Old Testament; theology; Biblical studies; Hebrew Bible
• Subjects: Theology