Brown-deVost, Bronson
Commentary and Authority in Mesopotamia and Qumran

At the heart of this book stands a comparative analysis of ancient cuneiform commentary texts from mid-to-late first millennium Mesopotamia and early Jewish commentaries - known as pesharim - from the turn of the common era found in caves near Khirbet Qumran. Though some aspects of Mesopotamian hermeneutics may have influenced Jewish exegesis, likely through Jewish Aramaic scribes, the actual Mesopotamian practice of composing commentary texts exerted little-to-no influence on the compositional techniques of the pesharim. Nevertheless, many textual difficulties in the Qumran pesharim can be explained as the result of an accretion of interpretations over an extended period of time - a practice detailed in the textual record of the Mesopotamian commentaries. What is more, these commentaries reveal important evidence about both the way in which and the extent to which such works functioned as authoritative sources. As a result, this book advocates a shift away from discussing textual authority in simple binary terms, both in ancient and modern contexts, to functional descriptions of literary authority. 296 Seiten, gebunden (Journal of Ancient Judaism. Supplements; Vol. 29/Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2019) leichte Lagerspuren/minor shelfwear