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Immediately upon rising, the community members washed themselves,
dressed, and hurried down the paths leading from their dwellings
to the central building, in order to observe together the commandment
of daily morning prayer. Evidence of the community's morning prayers
is found, for example, in a hymn in the Psalms Scroll (Column XIX).
Its sequence and vocabulary have much in common with the preliminary
morning service (birkhot hashahar) in normative Jewish liturgy.
The sectarians at Qumran appear to have worn phylacteries during
prayers, and certain members may have even worn them all day. The
phylacteries found at Qumran represent the oldest phylacteries known
to date. Their external form, the parchments they contain, and the
method by which they were fastened resemble the phylacteries used
today, made in accordance with the rabbinic prescription. However,
while the external form of phylacteries appears to have been standardized
during the first century CE, it seems that the regulations concerning
the contents of the phylacteries had not yet been established at
the time the Qumran phylacteries were made. This is attested by
the fact that some of the Qumran phylacteries contain the four usual
textual excerpts arranged in a different order, while others even
contain additional passages, such as the Ten Commandments.
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