The Parabiblical Texts: From Biblical Texts to Pesharim

The present study focuses on a significant portion of the non-biblical DSS often classified by scholars as ‘parabiblical’. These texts originated in the Second Temple period. Some of them are as old as – or older than – some of our biblical texts. Since discovering these texts, scholars have struggled how to categorize them and find a fitting term with which to designate them. This study tries to illustrate these difficulties and makes some further proposals. Because of their nature and the variety of their genres it locates these texts in between biblical texts and the pesharim, even though the use itself of the term ‘biblical’ in that context is not without problems.