UCLA

This dissertation presents a profile of the scholar-scribes of the Qumran Scrolls community as intertextual readers of their traditional scriptures. By closely examining the Qumran pesher literature, it shows how and why this ancient textual community constructed networks of textual relationships, interpreting scripture with scripture. It argues that these scribes’ marked propensity toward intertextual reading, which is underappreciated in past scholarship on the pesher literature, originated from their epistemological interest in discerning the mysterious divine plan of history. For them, the corpus of prophetic scripture comprised a semiotic system—a language, so to speak—whose structural aspects, when rightly perceived, would segment and give significance to the events of history. Specifically, the pesherists used the interconnected language of prophetic scripture to identify a succession of historical epochs leading up to and including the End of Days as well as the major protagonists who would arise and act within them. The four case studies in this dissertation analyze the hermeneutical operations and effects of the pesherists’ intertextual interpretation. The first two case studies, on 4QFlorilegium (4Q174) and 11QMelchizedek (11Q13), show the principles of intertextual framing—the construction of an array of intertexts around a base text—and intertextual blending—the mental process by which new, emergent concepts were derived from the juxtaposition of two or more texts. The third case study, on 4QPesher Psalms A (4Q171), deals with the question of subtle intertextual interpretation and demonstrates that the phenomenon of intertextual reading was a major factor even in the so-called “continuous pesharim,” in which no intertexts beyond the base text are explicitly cited. The fourth case study shows how the generative power of intertextual association led the pesherists, over time and across several sectarian compositions (especially 4QMMT and the Damascus Document), to develop an expanding network of scriptural texts around the motif of “turning aside from the way.” In each of the sectarian compositions studied in this dissertation, intertextual, associative reading provides a primary impetus and justification for the distinctive view of history—from Israel’s exile to anticipated restoration—that is propounded by the Qumran Scrolls community.