Notes On the Habakkuk Scroll and the Zadokite Documents

Abstract

The discussions as to whether DSH is a midrash or a commentary have a certain lack of reality, since often neither side bothersto specify with which of the widely different types of midrash or the equally divergent types of commentary they are comparing our text. It does, of course, to some extent resemble the ethical and mystical commentaries of the later middle ages, but they do not try to apply scripture to contemporary history. Among midrashim, there is none which attempts the consistent application of a whole book to one set of historical events. The nearest parallels in early Jewish literature are some targums to the Five Megilloth, especially the Targum to Canticles, which sees in that poem a consistent account of the story of the Exodus, employing not infrequently a technique similar to that of DSH. Tg. Cant. is a comparatively late work, but may go back to an old tradition of interpretation. We might even go further and say that, just as the late (ca. 9th cent.) Pirqe R. Eiie~er takes up ideas found in the Scrolls and in Jewish Gnosticism, so sectarian techniques of interpretation came back in the post-Islamic targumim. However, there is one essential difference: Tg. Cant. does not refer the text to its own time.