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

322 SOCIOLOGICAL AND LITURGICAL DIMENSIONS
Psalms in their canon of Scripture?” P. Flint has devoted his scholarly life
to this question. In our opinion if we do not define “canon” too narrowly,
he has shown conclusively that the answer is “yes.”
Flint argues that both formal (use of Psalms) and functional (number
of attestations) criteria clearly demonstrate that “the Psalms were among
those Scriptures which contained the revealed truth that was to be interpreted,
and served as the basis for the ordering of the community.” 15
According to Flint’s conclusions, the Psalms not only held authoritative
status, but also represented the very essence of life in the Qumran community.
If we look closely at the scrolls, we can see that the imagery, language,
and theology of the Psalms infused the community’s compositions
and created a pneumatic psalmic ethos within the Ya4h[ad. And it is from
the midst of this ethos that a Qumranite created the commentary known
as Psalm Pesher 1.
Psalm Pesher 1 resembles the form of the other pesharim found at
Qumran. 16 Like the pesharim, Psalm Pesher 1 utilizes a simple exegetical
strategy: the citation of Scripture (lemma) followed by a commentary on
the citation. In this format, the commentary directly builds upon Scripture
and explains the meaning of contemporary events in light of prophecy,
which for the Qumranites included the Psalms. That is, the Qumranites
wrote commentaries (pesharim) on the prophets (six on Isaiah, two on
there are numerous marginal and interlinear collections in the great Isaiah scroll (and
in 1QS), while the Temple Scroll is elegantly copied on vellum. For similar reflections,
see Emanuel Tov, “The Writing of Ancient Biblical Texts, with Special Attention to
the Judean Desert Scrolls,” in Sefer Moshe, The Moshe Weinfeld Jubilee Volume: Studies in
the Bible and the Ancient Near East, Qumran, and Post-Biblical Judaism (ed. C. Cohen, A.
Hurvitz, and S. M. Paul; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2004), 445–58. Classic and
seminal thoughts by the giants in the field are found in Frank M. Cross and
Shemaryahu Talmon, eds., Qumran and the History of the Biblical Text (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1975).
15. Flint, Dead Sea Psalms Scrolls, 219.
16. We have intentionally avoided the phrase “pesher genre” as a way to explain
the common features present in all or most of the pesharim. In recent publications,
scholars have used this phrase liberally and without regard for the implications of its
usage. To use the term “genre” to describe the pesharim glosses over several difficulties.
For example, in order to make a genre distinction one must have other similar
contemporary texts against which to compare a particular text and a frame of reference,
which clarifies other related, but different, genres. In the case of the Qumran
pesharim, no such texts exist, despite the repeated assurances of many scholars that
the midrashim provide acceptable, vaguely contemporary texts. For more on the
issues related to genre, see Alastair Fowler, Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the
Theory of Genres and Modes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), and Carol
Newsom, The Book of Job: A Contest of Moral Imaginations (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2003), 11–15.