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other ancient texts, like some of the Qumran Scrolls, suggest that disabilities had an impact on one's social standing only when they interfered with one's abUity to perform certain social or cultic duties. If this is the case, it wUl greatly enhance our understanding of the lived experience of disability in the biblical world. This book represents an important contribution to the study of disability in the biblical world. It will serve as a handy reference volume for years to come.

The Social Role of Liturgy in the Religion of the Qumran Community, by Russell G. D. Arnold. Studies on the Text of the Desert of Judah 60. Leiden:- Brill, 2006. Pp. X + 267. Gloth. $155.00. ISBN 9004150307. Garol A. Newsom, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia The texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls, not unlike the biblical texts, tantalize scholars by providing partial and indirect information about the lives and culture of the communities that produced and used them. Nowhere is this more so than in the case of the rituals and liturgies that are described and prescribed in a variety of often fragmentary documents. Although a number of previous studies have attempted to analyze liturgical texts from Qumran both in formal and literary terms and in relation to the development of Jewish liturgy, Arnold's monograph is the first full-length study to attempt to situate the Qumran materials in relation to the categories of ritual studies. Even as he sets up his inquiry, however, Arnold comments on what he describes as "a major difficulty of studying ritual on the basis of texts. We have no access to the actual practice of the ritual, and we have no access to any of the practitioners of the ritual. What we do have is a framework that places the rituals within a system of ideological and theological structures that provide meaning for them as a coherent system" (13). Despite this difficulty, Arnold embraces the challenge set by Lawrence Hoflman, the scholar of Jewish liturgy, who urges that studies move beyond text-immanent approaches to attempt to analyze the texts as evidence of religious practice. Thus the study of liturgy on the basis of liturgical texts must always proceed uneasily, one eye focused on the texts as the other eye attempts to look through them to the practices to which they allude. Arnold addresses a number of preliminary issues in the introduction, providing a brief review of previous studies, distinguishing between prayer and liturgy, and explaining the criteria that identify a text as "liturgical" (23-24). He does not, however, attempt to distinguish between the categories "liturgical" and "ritual." Although all liturgies are rituals, ritual would presumably be a broader category, and although Arnold's primary focus is on liturgical texts, he often makes reference to behaviors that are ritual but perhaps not liturgical. Nevertheless, leaving the boundary a bit fuzzy is probably the wisest course for the purposes of his inquiry. In this chapter Arnold also identifles a select number of perspectives and approaches within ritual studies that he flnds congenial to his investigation. While somewhat eclectic, Arnold gravitates toward

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those approaches that "consider ritual as a type of language, a complex means of communication" (9), and he complements the ritual studies perspectives with some attention to speech act theory. Although in the introduction he outlines five "layers of meaning" (16) that liturgy may have, in the body of the work this focus on meaning and the communicative force of ritual sometimes seems to fade into to a simpler social functionalist approach. In general, there seems to be an ambiguous tension between hermeneutical and functionalist assumptions in the work that is never quite raised to self-conscious reflection. Nevertheless, Arnold's use of Gatherine Bell's six ritual categories (rites of passage, feasts and fasts, calendrical rites, rites of affliction, political rites, and rites of communion) works quite well for organizing and understanding the liturgical materials from Qumran. The other issue that Arnold addresses in the introduction is the difficult one of which texts to consider. Arnold explains the criteria by which he attempts to distinguish texts of Qumran provenance. But rather than restrict his study to just those texts, Arnold also includes "liturgical texts that originated outside, but were likely used as liturgy by the community" (23). Although one can understand why Arnold makes this decision, it becomes particularly difficult to analyze the meaning and function of such adopted texts in the absence of the kind of information a participant observer would be able to gather. For this reason I flnd his discussion of Qumran texts more illuminating than the analysis of non-Qumran texts. The other decision Arnold makes is to restrict his inquiry into the life of the Yahad itself at Qumran, avoiding the difficult question of how the community described in the Serek ha-Yahad is related to that described in the Damascus Document. Ghapter 1, "Gommunity Structure," makes use of Mary Douglas's "group and grid" model, testing her conclusion that societies with particular ritual density are characterized by both strong group and strong grid against the characteristics of the Qumran community. Arnold demonstrates the strong separatist ideology of the Yahad, its corporate identity and hierarchy, its strong rule orientation, and its high expectations for righteousness and holiness, and its preoccupation with a closely regulated calendar and the control of speech. In one regard, however, which curiously Arnold does not discuss, the Qumran community's cosmology is the opposite of the "anthropomorphic; non-dualistic" one that Douglass associates with such strong group/grid societies. The bulk of the book is taken up with the analysis of the six categories of ritual and liturgical texts. Ghapter 2, "Rites of Passage," is perhaps the most important one. As Arnold observes, the sectarian rites of passage are not those concerned with life passages but with entrance into and exclusion from the community itself and the covenant renewal ceremony described in the Serek ha-Yahad appears to influence a variety of other liturgical texts that are considered in later chapters. In this chapter Arnold makes what will undoubtedly be a controversial decision. He uses the various parts of the Serek ha-Yahad (in its lQS recension), plus certain other texts, to reconstruct the sequential parts of the covenant renewal ceremony: "[1] preparation, [2] entrance of new initiates, [3]

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blessings and curses, [4] entrance into the serekh, [5] puriflcation and instruction, and [6] rebuke and dismissal" (54). Preparation actually refers to the procedures described in column 6 of the Serek ha-Yahad and so is not temporally a part of the ritual of the covenant renewal but a part of the larger ritual process. The next three sections of the ritual are those described in lQS 1:16-2:25 and are assumed by many to be a description of the ceremony. More problematic, however, is Arnold's reconstruction of the fifth stage of the rite, "preparation and instruction," in relation to lQS 2:25-4:26. It is not clear from the text itself that lQS 2:25-3:12 is part of the description of the ritual. It could rather be a hortatory reflection prompted by the description of the ceremony. That the Two Spirits treatise was read during the covenant-renewal ceremony certainly needs to be argued rather than assumed (74), especially since it is generally considered to be a separate document included in some but not all recensions of the Serek ha-Yahad. Even more problematic is reconstructing the conclusion of the covenant-renewal ceremony as consisting of "rebuke and dismissal" on the basis of references to such practices in 4QDamascusa. The methodological problem that surfaces in this part of the book is the relationship between a text that refers to and partially describes a ritual and what actually happened in the community. Arnold moves too quickly to reconstruct the ritual without having rigorously analyzed the nature and rhetoric of lQS itself Even what appears to be a prescriptive account of the ceremony may have been shaped by the rhetorical purposes of the text in which it is embedded. Nevertheless, the chapter is rich with analyses that inform our understanding of ritualized language at Qumran and the way in which it served to construct a community, such as Arnold's discussion of repentance as a boundary issue (58-59), the transformation of the function of confessional language necessitated by deterministic theology (64-66), the role of instruction in reframing members' language into the movement's ritual discourse (73), and the perpetual liminality that is implied in the annual repetition of the covenant renewal for all members (81). In chapter 3, "Feasts and Fasts," Arnold moves more deftly among different kinds of evidence, including archaeological evidence, to sketch a general picture of the signiflcance of ritualized meals at Qumran. Recognizing that some of the texts may not pertain in the flrst instance to the Yahad (lQS 6:lc-8) or to the present (lQSa 2:17-22), he nevertheless makes a good case for which aspects of these descriptions can give information about the meaning and function of meals. Arnold sees as particularly important the way in which ritual aspects of the meals reinforced the priority of the priest and the hierarchical ordering of the community (94-96, 99). With many others, he rejects the notion that the meals served as a substitute for sacriflce, stressing instead an anticipation of the eschatological era (98). The grammar of food practices also differentiates the Qumran community from other Jews, since, except for the Yom Kippur fast, fasting was apparently not a community practice (103-4), apparently for the same reasons that penitential prayer was not practiced, that is, the implications of a deterministic theology.

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The chapter on "Galendrical Rites," chapter 4, is a lengthy treatment of numerous texts, both those considered to be of Qumran provenance (4QMMT, 4QMishmarot A and B, lQS 9:26-10:4, lQHa 20:4-9,4QDaily Prayers, 4QSongs of the Sabbath Sacriflce) and those that were composed elsewhere but perhaps used at Qumran (llQPsa David's Gompositions, llQPsa Hymn to the Greator, 4QWords of the Luminaries, 4QFestival Prayers), and others whose provenance cannot be determined. Arnold begins his treatment of these liturgical texts with a reflection on Gatherine Bell's observation that calendrical rites "can be attempts to control nature, or to harmonize with it" (107). Through his analyses Arnold convincingly demonstrates how strenuously the Qumran community sought to harmonize their life and worship with the structures of cosmic time. Beyond that, the coordination of their worship with the worship of the angels is present in numerous texts (112, 130, 143), a phenomenon that should not be confused with imitation of angelic praise, which the Qumran community apparently did not practice (144). Because so many texts require treatment, Arnold is not able to delve deeply into the meaning and function of each. One of his noteworthy conclusions, however, is the remarkable lack of monthly rituals, which he attributes to the impact of the prominence of the solar calendar. Thus, the week forms the basic structuring unit of time, and, "in contrast, a month-especially a solar month-has no special authority in relation to creation" (157). In chapter 5, "Rites of Affliction," Arnold glosses Bell's category by noting that these rituals "alleviate ... anxiety by addressing disorder in the cosmos, whether the result of demons, evU spirits, iUness, sins or natural circumstances of impurity" (159). He considers two categories of texts. First are the curses (lQS 2:4-18; 4QBerakot; 4QGurses) and apotropaic prayers and incantations (4QSongs of the Maskil; 4Q560; llQapocryPsa; 4QExorcism ar) that presume a dualistic worldview and target either the human followers of Belial or the evil spiritual and demonic forces themselves. These rituals function as boundary protection, as empowerment, and as weapons in the cosmic battle. But they also serve to draw attention to the role of the power of speech itself and so can be usefuUy seen together with the attention to control of speech that appears in other Qumran texts. The second set of texts to be considered do not directly assume a dualistic world view but are the puriflcation rites that address either speciflc impurities (4QTohorot and 4QRitual of Puriflcation) or those that are related to the cycles of time (4QPuriflcation Liturgy). The signiflcance of the former for a study on the social function of ritual has to do with the ways in which these texts, although focused on the purity of the individual, nevertheless are related to he need of the Yahad to create a pure and holy community. Political rites, that is "rituals designed to reinforce the social structures of power" (187) are treated in chapter 6. Here Arnold flrst treats texts that have to do with the ranking of members (lQS 9:12-16; lQHa 6:8-22; 20:11-24), with disciplinary rituals (lQS 5:24-6:2), and with rituals of speech decorum (lQS 6:10-11), showing how these practices enact and reinforce the hierarchy of the community and also are instrumental in eflecting consensus. Other ritual acts

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serve to reinforce priestly authority, including several that are rituals for a future, eschatological community (e.g., lQM, lQSa, lQSb). The relevance of the Liturgy of the Tongues of Fire (4Q375, 376; 1Q29) to Arnold's discussion is questionable, since, as he notes, it is of uncertain provenance and is a Mosaic pseudepigraphon. Both the texts that prescribe eschatological rituals and those set in Mosaic times raise in an acute form the issue that goes largely unexplored in this work: by what theoretical means scholars should assess the social function of texts about rituals that may well not correspond to rituals actually practiced, that is, the social function of textualizing rituals. The book concludes in chapter 7 with an examination of rites of exchange and communion. Here Arnold shows how ritual theory can shed important light on the signiflcance of such things as the exchange of knowledge within the community. He also indicates how the Yahad's predestinarian theology requires some nuancing of ritual theory's understanding of the transactional nature of rites of exchange and communion, since the community's prayers do not ask for things from God. In his discussion of the Hodayot Arnold argues for a liturgical use in connection with the annual covenant-renewal ceremony but also stresses that they served to mediate a common experience among the members of the community, separating the members from outsiders and establishing community with the divine realm. In 77ie Social Role of Liturgy in the Religion of the Qumran Community Arnold undertakes an enormous task, one that cannot be wholly accomplished in a single book. There are two trade-offs that the project necessarily had to confront: one having to do with breadth versus depth; the other with exegetical versus theoretical focus. In each case Arnold opts for the former. By focusing on breadth of coverage, Arnold is able to demonstrate vividly the "ritual density" of life at Qumran and to suggest the powerful social force of such a ritualized form of life. This is an important contribution, since most previous studies have focused only on particular texts or types of texts. Although Arnold's research questions are generally guided by ritual theory, he opts to focus more on exegetical rather than theoretical issues, since the interpretation of many of these difficult texts is often contested territory. Arnold is a careful, well-informed, and judicious guide through these treacherous waters, often offering important new insights of his own. The issues that he has opted not to pursueparticularly the interesting issue of the social functions of discourse about ritualsare questions that one hopes other scholars will take up.