Pesher

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Pesher is a Hebrew word meaning "interpretation" in the sense of "solution". It became known from one group of texts, numbering some hundreds, among the Dead Sea Scrolls. The pesharim (plural of Pesher) take a book of the Hebrew Bible, often from the prophets, such as Habakkuk, Nahum, or from the Psalms, quote it phrase by phrase, and after each quotation insert an interpretation, preceded by "its Pesher is". The procedure is closely analogous to the Medieval technique of the Glossators, who provided, following each passage, a reading or gloss that was "fraught with significance to the ideology or history of the... Community", Robert Eisenman noted (1997 p 81), though the community he was referring to was the Essene community that produced the Scrolls as well as these commentaries—pesharim—in a rich apocalyptic literature of the last century BCE and the first century CE.

"Often this takes the form of citing a biblical passage or quotation out of context or even sometimes slightly altered, followed by the words, "Peshero" or "Pesher-ha-davar", meaning "its interpretation" or "the interpretation of the passage is". ...The process is a familiar one to those conversant with the New Testament, particularly the Gospel of Matthew." (Eisenman p 81), as well as to those conversant in Gnostic texts in North Africa a few generations later.

At Qumran, the same imagery and personifications are consistent from document to document, some also familiar to modern readers from the New Testament: the "Righteous One", the Poor, the community as temple, the holy spirit, the star prophecy, the End times and other messianic images. These allusive images are tied in an apocalyptic manner to selected prized biblical texts.

The pesharim are a new genre, known for the first time from this group of Dead Sea Scrolls. They give a theory of scriptural interpretation, previously partly known, but now fully defined. The writers of pesharim believe that scripture is written in two levels, the surface for ordinary readers with limited knowledge, the concealed one for specialists with higher knowledge, those that taught in the Essene schools. They also are the main source for the history of the Teacher of Righteousness and his rival the Wicked Priest.

The interpretations of the pesharim claim to be solutions of a mystery that is concealed in the biblical text. These philosophical claims are similar to those found throughout the region at the beginnings of the common era, as evidenced by the many mystery cults of Mithras, Isis, Dionysus, etc. active at the time, the tradition continued through the Gnostic movements, and is still prevalent today among certain fundamentalist Moslem and Christian groups with a heavy emphasis on holy books. The Pesharim interpreted some books of the Hebrew prophets in light of an Essene mythology foretelling the Teacher of Righteousness and the Wicked Priest, two figures who were contemporaries of the pesharists, hundreds of years after the biblical books were written. Details of what these figures did or meant are given consistent (though arbitrary) readings applied to the biblical words.

There is a considerable body of scholarly research discussing the methods of the pesharim, which can be classified under the general category of fulfillment hermeneutics.

[edit] Barbara Thiering's use of pesher techniques

The term pesher technique refers to the interpretive technique presented by Barbara Thiering, which she discusses in her books and scholarly articles. According to her view, in the four Canonical Gospels, Acts and Revelation historical facts have been encoded into the text in the form of parables and accounts of "miracles" and can be recovered by applying the pesher technique.

[edit] External links

• The Pesher to Habakkuk – A discussion of Peshar commentary in the Dead Sea Scrolls—particularly to the transcription of Habakkuk.
• The pesher on Habakkuk (1QpHab) Barbara Thiering's interpretation of this pesher and its historical context.
• The Pesher Technique – An excerpt from one of Thiering's books.

[edit] References

• Eisenman, Robert, 1997. James the Brother of Jesus: The Key to Unlocking the Secrets of Early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls, pp80–86 et passim

[edit] Further reading

• James H. Charlesworth, 2006. “The Pesharim and Qumran History: Chaos or Consensus?” (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company)
• Sidney Greidanus, 1999. “Preaching Christ from the Old Testament: A Contemporary Hermeneutical Method” (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company)
• Willem A. Van Gemeren, 1996. “Interpreting the Prophetic Word” (Zondervan; New Ed edition)
• Barbara Thiering, 2006. Jesus the Man: Decoding the Real Story of Jesus and Mary Magdalene (Simon & Schulster:Atria Books)