Aesthetic Convention and Ritual Creativity in Late Antique Piyyut

Abstract: In this article, I will examine how liturgical poets creatively reworked biblical quotations and allusions in service of their own poetic and liturgical ambitions through analysis of a late antique composition attributed to Eleazar Haqallir (Qallir) (late sixth/early seventh century), “What Man Lives and Does not See Death?” This poem, which takes its opening line from Psalm 89:49, was composed for an occasion when the Torah reading began with Deuteronomy 33:1, Moses’s poetic blessing of the Israelites before his death. Qallir’s composition transforms the biblical episode into a miniature, multivoiced drama, one that draws on an extensive body of postbiblical exegetical tradition. First, it depicts Moses’s vigorous arguments with God and various heavenly intercessors as he seeks to avert his fate; upon conceding that he cannot escape mortality, it describes how Moses is mourned by not only the Israelites but all creation. The final portion of the piyyut transitions from a depiction of funerary ritual (in the biblical past) to the recitation of the Qedushah (in the liturgical present). With its complex, multivocal narrative, this composition illustrates how liturgical poets reworked biblical poetry—in this case, Deuteronomy 32–33 and Psalm 90—by reading it through the lens of postbiblical narrative traditions while also leveraging the performative-ritual context in which the poems were experienced. This poem’s reuse of traditional material reflects the aesthetic conventions of the poetic craft and performative practices of dramatic delivery in late antiquity.