Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Qumran and the prophetic

[At Qumran] works were composed that employed cosmological speculation about the divine plan for the world or described the eschatological battle of good and evil spirits in heaven as well as on earth. The community began to determine its own place within biblical, sacred history and to extend their reflection on this history as it reached the expected “end of days.” Apart from the biblical history in the Torah and Former Prophets, the Latter Prophets played a decisive role: here, the prophetic books including the Book of Daniel and the Psalms of David, which were also regarded as prophecy, come into play. The many copies of biblical prophetic books, citations from the prophets, prophetic apocrypha, as well as the interpretations of entire prophetic books in the pesharim attest to this.—The Prophets of Israel, page 90

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