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Habbakuk

With reference to 1Qhab and other texts, how did those at Qumran interpret the scriptures?

With this essay I am going to deal mainly with the Habbakuk commentary, which is also known as the Habbakuk ‘Pesher’ or 1Qhab. This well preserved and detailed exposition of the first two chapters of the book of Habbakuk comes from Cave 1 and was published in 1950. The Habbakuk commentary is one of the main sources for the study of Qumran origins, as well as Essene Bible exegesis and the sect’s theology regarding prophecy. Habbakuk was a Hebrew prophet of the 7th Century c.e. whose prophecies are found in one of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The so-called ‘Pesher’ is a commentary on Habbakuk’s work. It is an extremely detailed, line-by-line examination and translation of the scroll and is a part of the scroll itself. The scroll is damaged and some pieces are missing entirely, so that the Pesher is of necessity incomplete.

The Qumran community completed many other Biblical commentaries, indeed, there are five different types of Biblical commentary that can be found amongst the Qumran literature. The first and least developed form of exegesis is contained in the so-called ‘Re-worked Pentateuch’ texts, containing quasi traditional Bible texts occ

. . .

The pesher with its explicit mention of the desertion by disciples of the ‘Teacher of Righteousness’ to the ‘Liar’, the ‘Spouter of Lies’, the ‘Wicked Priest’, ’Kittim’ and so forth, paints a picture of the politics and beliefs of the Qumran movement. The scriptures were clearly interpreted to suit the community, diminishing its enemies and promoting its heroes.

In brief,

‘[T]he Commentary or Pesher on the first two chapters of Habakkuk were made from a sectarian viewpoint, much like some evangelicals treat the O T scriptures today. The gaps known as ‘lacunae’ that occur in the text are spots where the pages are physically missing. … The text itself is ‘run together’ with the peshers’’

Taken from ‘Content of Pesher’. The commentator has taken the prophecy of Habbakuk, which details the struggle of the people of God against their oppressors, and changed it to reflect their own s!

truggle against their Jewish and their Roman enemies. The Pesher is described as follows:

‘The word ‘pesher’ has the approximate meaning of ‘to explain. Likewise, there is sometimes no indication of where the pesher ends, the reader simply recognizes that the text has begun again. He robbed and amassed the riches of the men of violence who rebelled against God, and he took the wealth of the peoples, heaping sinful iniquity upon himself.

Approximate Word count = 2103
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)

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