the-bible-and-the-dead-sea-scrolls

CHARLESWORTH AND MCSPADDEN 329
By its very subject, Psalm Pesher 1 is prophetic. Earlier we observed that
at Qumran the Psalter and related psalms circulated through the community
as an authoritative set of texts. It seems that part of this authority
derived from their status as prophecy. The Qumranites made no
distinction between what later generations labeled the prophetic books
and the Psalms. To the Qumranites, David, the author of the Psalms, was
a prophet. Recall the biographical comment in 11QpPs a : “and the Lord
gave him (David) a discerning and enlightened spirit. And he wrote 3,600
psalms.…All these he composed through prophecy which was given him
from before the most high” (11Q5 = 11QPs a 27.3–11). 39 Thus, to members
in the Ya4h[ad, the Psalms embodied the inspiration of David the
prophet, and carried forward his prophetic spirit. And to the members of
the Ya4h[ad, Psalm 37 offered a potent and immediate prophecy concerning
the people of God—a people against whom the wicked generation
continually lifted its hands, but to whom and through whom God elected
to fulfill the divine promises.
The form of Psalm Pesher 1 further exposes the text’s prophetic character.
The organization of the text into three parts—lemma, interpretive formula,
and commentary—creates smaller cycles of prophecy, which
independently offer distinctive, divine speech and collectively reinforce
communal ideology. From lemma to commentary—old word to new, previous
prophecy to current prophecy—each cycle draws out the hidden
meaning of the Psalm, creating a new word again on target for God’s
elect. The catalyst in this process, and the point at which exegetical transformation
occurs, is r#p itself. This simple term creates a bridge from
Temple-priest-identity to Qumran-priest-identity. As Scripture passes, or
is passed, over the interpretative formula, the formula transforms
Scripture, producing a pneumatic eschatological interpretation that
reveals the meaning of Scripture (God’s Word). According to the
Qumranites, they are permitted to see, through God’s grace bestowed on
the Righteous Teacher, the meaning God had hidden in Scripture.
Is this exegetical process a means of substitution in which the new
word replaces the old? Most scholars rightly comprehend that this is not
the case, observing that the pesher mode of interpretation does not
exchange one text for another, but rather expands the meaning of the former,
giving rise to a hermeneutic of fulfillment. 40 Psalm Pesher 1 does not
39. Sanders, Psalms Scroll, 86–87. Italics added.
40. See, George J. Brooke, “Biblical Interpretation in the Qumran Scrolls and in the
New Testament,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Fifty Years after their Discovery: Proceedings of the
Jerusalem Congress, July 20–25, 1997 (ed. L. H. Shiffman, E. Tov, and J. C. VanderKam;
Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society and the Shrine of the Book, 2000), 60–73;