Ancient Jewish and Christian Prayers
Ancient Jewish and Christian Prayers
Project Summary
I have produced a recognizable body of scholarship on ancient Jewish and Christian prayers and hymns. During the formative period of biblical scholarship in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, ancient prayers and hymns were examined with form criticism, an approach that came to dominate how biblical scholars for much of the twentieth century approached these texts. The Dead Sea Scrolls that were discovered in 1947 included many ancient Jewish prayers that had never been known before. Much of my early work has focused on the Jewish prayers known as the Thanksgiving Hymns (Hebr. Hodayot) from Qumran Caves 1 and 4. My recent research on these and other prayers uses new integrative approaches alongside traditional historical-critical methods to gain fresh insights into these texts.
Publications
Books
Harkins, Angela Kim. Experiencing Presence in the Second Temple Period: Revised and Updated Essays. Contributions to Biblical Exegesis and Theology 111. Leuven: Peeters Press, 2022.
Harkins, Angela Kim and Barbara Schmitz (ed.). Selected Studies on Deuterocanonical Prayers. Contributions to Biblical Exegesis and Theology Series 103. Leuven: Peeters Press, 2021.
Harkins, Angela Kim. Reading with an “I” to the Heavens: Looking at the Qumran Hodayot through the Lens of Visionary Traditions. Ekstasis 3. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012; paperback 2018.
Journal Articles and Scholarly Essays
Harkins, Angela Kim. "Retelling Foundational Events in Psalm 106: Experiencing and Remembering the Past." Pages 83-104 in The Power of Psalms in Post-Biblical Judaism: Liturgy, Ritual and Community. Edited by Claudia D. Bergmann, Tessa Rajak, Benedikt Kranemann, Rebecca Ullrich. Leiden: Brill, 2023.
Harkins, Angela Kim. “Ritual Mourning in Daniel’s Interpretation of Jeremiah’s Prophecy.” Pages 173-92 in Studying the Religious Mind: Methodology in the Cognitive Science of Religion. Edited by Armin Geertz with Leonardo Ambasciano, Esther Eidinow, Luther H. Martin, Kristoffer L. Nielbo, Nickolas P. Roubekas, Valerie van Mulukom, Dimitris Xygalatas. Sheffield: Equinox Press, 2022.
Harkins, Angela Kim. “Sticky Emotions from Second Temple Prayers: A Study of Paul’s Grief in 2 Corinthians.” Pages 159-83 in Experiencing Presence in the Second Temple Period: Revised and Updated Essays. Contributions to Biblical Exegesis & Theology 111. Leuven: Peeters Press, 2022.
Harkins, Angela Kim. “The Imaginative Experiencing of Psalm of Solomon 8.” Pages 203-220 in Psalms of Solomon: Texts, Contexts, and Intertexts. SBLEJL 54. Edited by Patrick Pouchelle, G. Anthony Keddie, and Kenneth Atkinson. Atlanta: SBL Press, 2021.
Harkins, Angela Kim. “Early Jewish Prayer.” Co-authored with Daniel Falk. Pages 461-486 in Early Judaism and its Modern Interpreters. Edited by Matthias Henze and Rodney Werline. Atlanta: SBL Press, 2020.
Harkins, Angela Kim. “Experiencing the Solidity of Spaces in the Qumran Hodayot.” Pages 353-71 in The Dead Sea Scrolls, Revise and Repeat: New Methods and Perspectives on the Dead Sea Scrolls. Edited by Andrew Krause, Carmen Palmer, Eileen M. Schuller, and John Screnock. SBLEJL. Atlanta: SBL Press, 2020.
Harkins, Angela Kim. “Emotion and Law in the Book of Baruch.” Pages 49-69 in The Early Reception of the Torah. Edited by Kristin De Troyer, Barbara Schmitz, Joshua Alfaro, and Maximilian Häberlein. DCLS 39. Berlin: De Gruyter Press, 2020.
Harkins, Angela Kim. “Hymns and Psalmody.” Angela Kim Harkins and Brian P. Dunkle, S.J. Pp 610-626 in The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Ritual. Edited by Risto Uro, Juliette J. Day, Richard E. DeMaris, and Rikard Roitto. Oxford University Press, 2019.
Harkins, Angela Kim. “Ritualizing Jesus’ Grief at Gethsemane.” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 41.2 (2018): 177-203.
Harkins, Angela Kim. “Another Look at the Cave 1 Hodayot: Was CH I Materially Part of the Scroll 1QHodayota?” Dead Sea Discoveries 25.2 (2018): 185-216.
Harkins, Angela Kim. “The Function of Prayers of Ritual Mourning in the Second Temple Period.” Pages 80-101 in Functions of Psalms and Prayers in the Late Second Temple Period. Conference proceedings for Copenhagen meeting. Edited by Mika S. Pajunen and Jeremy Penner. BZAW 486. Berlin: De Gruyter Press, 2017.
Harkins, Angela Kim. “The Garden Space in Odes of Solomon 11 and the Reinvigoration of Memories about Paradise.” Pages 1-33 in Biblical & Qur’ānic Traditions in the Middle East. Edited by Cornelia Horn and Sidney Griffith. Eastern Mediterranean Texts and Contexts Series 2. Warwick, R.I.: Abelian Academic Press, 2016.
Harkins, Angela Kim. “The Pro-social Role of Grief in Ezra’s Penitential Prayer.” Biblical Interpretation vol. 24.4-5 (2016): 466-491.
Harkins, Angela Kim. “The Odes of Solomon as Solomonic Pseudepigrapha.” Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 25.4 (2016): 247-273.
Harkins, Angela Kim. “A Phenomenological Study of Penitential Elements and Their Strategic Arousal of Emotion in the Qumran Hodayot (1QH cols. 1[?]-8).” Pages 297-316 in Ancient Jewish Prayers and Emotions: A Study of the Emotions Associated with Prayer in the Jewish and Related Literature of the Second Temple Period. Edited by Renate Egger-Wenzel and Stefan C. Reif. DCLS 26. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2016.
Harkins, Angela Kim. “Ritual Mourning in Daniel’s Interpretation of Jeremiah’s Prophecy.” The Journal of Cognitive Historiography 2.1 (2015): 14-33.
Harkins, Angela Kim. Critical Introduction and notes to the Thanksgiving Hymns (Hodayot). Pages 2018-2094 in Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture. Edited by Louis H. Feldman, James L. Kugel, and Lawrence H. Schiffman. The Jewish Publication Society/University of Nebraska Press, 2013.
Harkins, Angela Kim. “Religious Experience through the Lens of Critical Spatiality: A Look at Embodiment Language in Prayers and Hymns.” Pages 223-242 in Experientia, Volume 2: Moving from Text to Experience. Edited by Colleen Shantz and Rodney Werline. Atlanta: SBL Press, 2012.
Harkins, Angela Kim. “Who is the Teacher of the Teacher Hymns? Re-examining the Teacher Hymns Hypothesis Fifty Years Later.” Pages 449-467 in A Teacher for All Generations: Essays in Honor of James C. VanderKam. General editor Eric Mason; Vol. 1 edited by Samuel Thomas and Alison Schofield, and Eugene C. Ulrich; Supplements of the Journal for the Study of Judaism 153. Leiden: Brill, 2012.
Harkins, Angela Kim. “The Performative Reading of the Hodayot: The Arousal of Emotions and the Exegetical Generation of Texts.” Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 21.1 (2011): 55-71.
Harkins, Angela Kim. “Reading the Qumran Hodayot in Light of the Traditions Associated with Enoch.” The Journal Henoch: Studies in Judaism and Christianity from Second Temple to Late Antiquity 32.2 (2010): 359-400.
Harkins, Angela Kim. “A New Proposal for Thinking about 1QHa Sixty Years after its Discovery.” Pages 101-134 in Qumran Cave 1 Revisited: Texts from Cave 1 Sixty Years after Their Discovery. Proceedings of the Sixth Meeting of the International Organization of Qumran Studies in Ljubljana. Edited by Daniel K. Falk, Sarianna Metso, Donald W. Parry and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar. STDJ 91. Leiden: Brill, 2010.
Harkins, Angela Kim. “The Community Hymns Classification: A Proposal for Further Differentiation.” Dead Sea Discoveries 15 (2008): 121-54.
Harkins, Angela Kim. “Observations on the Editorial Shaping of the So-called Community Hymns in 1QHa and 4Q427 (4QHa).” Dead Sea Discoveries 12.3 (2005): 233-56.
Harkins, Angela Kim (née Angela Y. Kim). “Authorizing Interpretation in Poetic Compositions in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Later Jewish and Christian Traditions.” Dead Sea Discoveries 10.1 (2003): 26- 58.
