The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls: The ... - josephprestonkirk

318 BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION AT QUMRAN
IV. SUMMARY
The history of research into biblical interpretation has shown that gradually
scholars have become aware of the full range of exegetical activity
in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the texts to be linked with the Qumran
community and the wider movement of which it was a part. Over the
years the Qumran exegetes have become increasingly freestanding, discussed
in relation to other forms of biblical interpretation in both Judaism
and Christianity, but no longer forced into the molds already made for
describing those other phenomena.
The availability since 1991 of all the compositions to be found in the
Qumran materials has brought the Law back into pride of place in the
modern understanding of this particular example of early Judaism. But
alongside the Law and its interpretation belong a number of other factors
that influenced the Qumran covenanters’ attitudes to their authoritative
texts. Chief among these is the sense that the end times were near, indeed
had already been inaugurated in the experiences of the community. The
community’s view of history, derived in part from its understanding of
the Prophets, Psalms, and unfulfilled blessings and curses, and in part
from contemporary political circumstances, made the correct interpretation
of the Law and Israel’s broader history a matter of urgency.
Though the Law and the Prophets dominate biblical interpretation in
the Qumran community’s own writings, there are other forms of interpretation
alongside the legal and the pesherite. The narrative interpretations
discernible in various texts and the new community poems show
how much the whole of what was received from earlier generations was
respected and reused. The five types of exegesis offered in this essay provide
sufficient breadth of categories to accommodate the richness of biblical
interpretation at Qumran.
The large amount of material from Qumran never comprehensively
surveyed with regard to biblical interpretation has also permitted us to
uncover much information about the presuppositions and assumptions
that the community had over several generations concerning the process
of interpretation itself: the character and number of the authoritative
writings, the view of progressive and ongoing revelation, the function of
the interpreter, the authority of the interpretation, the use of exegetical
techniques. The Qumran Scrolls have truly transformed the landscape of
the modern understanding of biblical interpretation in early Judaism.