My Lips Play Flute for the Highest

Book excerpt: My Lips Play Flute for the Highest presents fifty-five poetic texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls and other early Jewish writings: hymns, psalms, liturgies, petitions, visions, and end-time scenarios. In psalms and prayers we may come close to the souls of ancient Judeans, who pour out their sufferings, laments, hopes, and praises to their God. We encounter a plurality of end-time hopes, with or without messianic actors on earth. Jewish piety from the last two centuries before the turn of the era emerges vibrant and powerful, but also sensitive and full of hope. Introductions to the various scrolls and writings inform readers about how scholars understand these texts and where scholarship locates them in time and space. This book provides a moving and vital entry into early Judaism, before the emergence of the Jesus movement and rabbinic Judaism.