ABSTRACT
One of the fascinating features of the QumrSn library has been a series of ostensible commentaries on certain of the Psalms'and the Prophets, evidently written by a member or members of the Sect, which are actually half-disguised records of events in the history of the Sect itsel£ These commentaries are known as pesharim, because after each verse the special interpretation begins with "Pishro at . . ("Its interpretation relates to . . .")• At the time i first wrote on this subject, the most extensive of these was the commentary on Habakkuk which had been found in Cave One among the first batch of manuscripts. This stimulated a great deal of interest because it seemed to throw some light on the historical background of the documents. There appear certain unnamed figures who are mentioned in others of the scrolls: the Teacher of Righteousness, the Wicked Priest, the Prophet or Man of Untruth, and the enemy the Essenes are opposing, who are referred to as the Kittim. The last of these, who are said to worship their eagles and who seem to be identified in other ways, were believed to be the Romans, who invaded Palestine in 63 b.c. The Teacher of Righteousness had been evidently the leader of the Sect; the Wicked Priest and the Man of Untruth were perhaps the same hated person, and he was eventually identified by Dupont-Sommer as the Hasmonean Hyrcanus II, who was at once 264High Priest of Jerusalem (78-40 b.c.) and King of the Jews in that dynasty—a descendant, that is, of the Maccabees, the pugnacious Jewish family who put up such a fight against the Seleucids, the successors, in possession of Palestine, of Alexander the Great, after he had conquered Judea. But it was tantalizing not to know exactly who these persons were or precisely what had taken place.
