The Admonitions in the Damascus Document as a Series of Thematic Pesharim

Updated by: 
Shiran Shevah
Research notes: 
SHS/not checked/17/12/2018 ECK/reader checked/23/12/2018
Reference type: 
Journal Article
Author(s): 
Goldman, Liora
year: 
2018
Full title: 

The Admonitions in the Damascus Document as a Series of Thematic Pesharim

Journal / Book Title || Series Title: 
Dead Sea Discoveries
Volume: 
25
Issue / Series Volume: 
3
Abbreviated Series Name: 
DSD
Pages: 
385-411
Work type: 
Essay/Monograph
Abstract: 

This study reveals a mosaic of artful rearrangement, rewriting, and creative interpretation of prophetic texts within the Admonitions of the Damascus Document. Many explicit quotations from scriptures and implicit allusions are interwoven and interpreted in the Admonitions through various methods, including pesher interpretation. The textual backdrop of the Admonitions helps us to determine the borders of the different discourses and to define the structure of the composition, which is divided into ten discourses built in a symmetrical chiastic structure. Each discourse comprises layers of quotations and allusions arranged around a central explicit pesher. Therefore, the explicit pesher in each discourse should not be viewed as an isolated pesher, as some have claimed, but rather as part of a larger thematic pesher. Each discourse/thematic pesher presents a different aspect of the work’s central theme: a polemic introduction to the rules of interpreting the Torah.

Primary Texts: Judean Desert Documents: 
Scroll / Document: 
CD
URL: 
https://brill.com/view/journals/dsd/25/3/article-p385_6.xml
Label: 
07/01/2019
Record number: 
104 142