worship 65
Josephus wrote in his autobiography about a general assembly in the
proseuche in Tiberias in Galilee in 67 ce, describing it as ‘a very large
building and able to hold a huge crowd’. He narrated the story of a
crowded meeting there on a Saturday morning, which was prevented
from turning ugly, according to him, by a break for lunch; then of a
second meeting, on Sunday morning, for which the people assembled in
the proseuche, although they had no idea why they were being con-
vened; and finally of a third meeting on the Monday, which was declared
a fast day, where the community were ‘performing the customary acts
and turning to their prayers’ until the assembly broke up in a riot.^40
We cannot say for certain what form these prayers took, since most
direct evidence from before 70 ce relates not to communal but to pri-
vate prayers, such as the prayer at time of greatest danger attributed to
Esther in the Greek version of her story: ‘O my Lord, you only are our
king; help me, who am alone and have no helper but you ... O God,
whose might is over all, hear the voice of the despairing and save us
from the hands of evildoers. And save me from my fear!’ Many private
prayer texts were found among scrolls from before 70 ce discovered in
Qumran, suggesting widespread piety at least among those whose texts
were hidden in the Qumran caves, but other texts found among the
Dead Sea scrolls look much like prayers to be recited communally: ‘We
shall recount Thy marvels from generation to generation. Blessed be the
Lord who has caused us to rejoice.’ One of the longer scrolls contains a
substantial number of thanksgiving hymns which may have been sung
by the community like the psalms: ‘Blessed art Thou, O Lord, Maker [of
all things and mighty in] deeds: all things are thy work! Behold, Thou
art pleased to favour [thy servant], and hast graced me with Thy spirit
of mercy and [with the radiance] of Thy glory .. .’ Philo wrote about a
group of contemplative Jews in his day, the Therapeutae (see Chapter
6), who had a mixed choir of men and women which imitated the sing-
ing of Moses and Miriam after the crossing of the Red Sea: ‘the choir of
the Therapeutae of either sex, note in response to note and voice to
voice, the treble of the women blending with the bass of the men, create
an harmonious concert, music in the truest sense.’ But we do not know
whether such liturgical practice, picked out for praise by Philo probably
with a non- Jewish readership in mind, was normal in Jewish liturgy or
(as is perhaps more likely) the exception.^41
By contrast to the scarcity of direct evidence from before 70 ce, the
Mishnah provides a good deal of insight into standard liturgical pat-
terns by the end of the second century ce. It is possible that many of