Nahum Commentary

The Nahum Commentary or Pesher Nahum, labelled 4QpNah (Cave 4, Qumran, pesher, Nahum) was among the Dead Sea Scrolls in cave 4 of Qumran that was discovered in August 1952. The editio princeps of the text is to be found in DJD V., edited by John Allegro. The text is described thus: 'one of the "continuous pesharim" from Qumran, successive verses from the biblical book of Nahum are interpreted as reflecting historical realities of the 1st century BCE."[1]

The most clearly historical references in the text can be found in Fragments 3-4 Column 1, which cites Nahum 2:11b, "Where the lion goes to enter, there also goes the whelp..." and provides the commentary,

"[This refers to Deme]trius, king of Greece, who sought to enter Jerusalem through the counsel of the Flattery-Seekers; [but it never fell into the] power of the kings of Greece from Antiochus until the appearance of the rulers of the kittim...."[2]

According to Larry R. Helyer (as well as to many other scholars), Demetrius in this text is Demetrius III Eucaerus (95-88 BCE), the Seleucid king who defeated Alexander Jannaeus in battle, but was forced to withdraw back to Syria. Accordingly, by "the Flattery-Seekers", the Pharisees were probably meant.[3]

See also

Bibliography

References

  1. Shani L. Berrin (2004). The Pesher Nahum Scroll from Qumran: An Exegetical Study of 4Q169. BRILL. p. 1.
  2. Translation by E.M. Cook in Michael Wise, Martin Abegg Jr, & Edward Cook, eds. (1996). The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation. HarperSanFrancisco. p. 217.
  3. Larry R. Helyer, Exploring Jewish Literature of the Second Temple Period. InterVarsity Press, 2002 ISBN 0830826785
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