The Nahum Commentary or Pesher Nahum, labelled 4QpNah (Cave 4, Qumran, pesher, Nahum) or 4Q169, was among the
Dead Sea Scrolls
The Dead Sea Scrolls, also called the Qumran Caves Scrolls, are a set of List of Hebrew Bible manuscripts, ancient Jewish manuscripts from the Second Temple period (516 BCE – 70 CE). They were discovered over a period of ten years, between ...
in
cave 4 of
Qumran
Qumran (; ; ') is an archaeological site in the West Bank managed by Israel's Qumran National Park. It is located on a dry marl plateau about from the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, about south of the historic city of Jericho, and adjac ...
that was discovered in August 1952. The ''
editio princeps
In Textual scholarship, textual and classical scholarship, the ''editio princeps'' (plural: ''editiones principes'') of a work is the first printed edition of the work, that previously had existed only in manuscripts. These had to be copied by han ...
'' 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
The Book of Nahum is the seventh book of the 12 minor prophets of the Hebrew Bible. The book has three chapters. It is attributed to the prophet Nahum. The most general historical setting of Nahum as a prophet was 663 BC to 612 BC, while the hist ...
are interpreted as reflecting historical realities of the 1st century BCE."
Text
The most clearly historical references in the text can be found in Fragments 3-4 Column 1, which cites Nahum 2:11b, "Where the lion goes to enter, there also goes the whelp..."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,
" his refers to Demerius, king of Greece, who sought to enter Jerusalem through the counsel of the Flattery-Seekers; ut it never fell into thepower of the kings of Greece from Antiochus until the appearance of the rulers of the kittim
Kittim was a settlement in present-day Larnaca on the east coast of Cyprus, known in ancient times as Kition, or (in Latin) Citium. On this basis, the whole island became known as "Kittim" in Hebrew, including the Hebrew Bible. However the name s ...
...."
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
The Seleucid Empire ( ) was a Greek state in West Asia during the Hellenistic period. It was founded in 312 BC by the Macedonian general Seleucus I Nicator, following the division of the Macedonian Empire founded by Alexander the Great, a ...
king who defeated
Alexander Jannaeus
Alexander Jannaeus ( , English: "Alexander Jannaios", usually Latinised to "Alexander Jannaeus"; ''Yannaʾy''; born Jonathan ) was the second king of the Hasmonean dynasty, who ruled over an expanding kingdom of Judaea from 103 to 76 BCE. ...
in battle, but was forced to withdraw back to Syria.
The text refers to the biblical passages from Nahum 1:3-6; 2:12-14; 3:1-5, 6-9, 10-12, 14.
See also
*
The Seekers after Smooth Things
Bibliography
*
Allegro, John M., ''Qumran Cave 4, I (4Q158-4Q186)''
DJD V. (Oxford, 1968) ''editio princeps'', pp. 37–42.
* Berrin, Shani L., ''The Pesher Nahum Scroll from Qumran: An Exegetical Study of 4Q169''. (Leiden: Brill, 2004)
* Berrin, Shani L., "Pesher Nahum" in ''Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls'', eds Lawrence H. Schiffman and James C. VanderKam, Volume 2. (Oxford, 2000) , pp. 653–655.
* Doudna, Gregory, ''4Q Pesher Nahum: A Critical Edition''. (Sheffield Academic Press, 2002)
*
Charlesworth, James H., Henry W. L. Rietz, Casey D. Elledge, and Lidija Novakovic. ''Pesharim, Other Commentaries, and Related Documents.'' The Dead Sea Scrolls: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek Texts with English Translations 6b. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002. (More recent publication of the Hebrew text and English translation on facing pages)
*
Cross, Frank Moore. ''The Ancient Library of Qumran.'' 3d ed. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995. (General reading on the Dead Sea Scrolls in general, their discovery, and contents)
* Ingrassia, David,(2002)CLASS
Biblical Commentaries:Pesharim.Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible.
* http://www.preteristarchive.com/BibleStudies/DeadSeaScrolls/4Q169_pesher_nahum.html
References
External links
4Q169 at the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library
{{Authority control
Dead Sea Scrolls