The importance of the expression prtm ;int and its variant forms for understanding of the extra-biblical Qumran texts and the Damascus Fragments can scarcely be overstated. The meaning of this expression, and the identification of the person or persons whom it may designate, are intimately bound up with the main questions of the dates of composition and the group-provenience of these documents. Scarcely less obviously involved are such corollary problems as the so-called sectarianism of these works, the connections between the ideas expressed therein and those of other preand early post-Christian literature, and the critical evaluation of the texts as sources for the backgrounds both of Tannaitic Judaism and nascent Christianity. Naturally, therefore, the teacher or guide of righteousness, as these two words are generally translated, has figured prominently in scholarly discussion of the extrabiblical Qumran literature; the French scholar, A. MICHEL, has even devoted an entire volume to the subject 1). Nevertheless, consensus neither on the exact meaning of the title, when the expression is used as such, nor on the identification of the person, or persons, to whom allusion is thus made has yet been reached; and since MICHEL wrote, some additional pertinent scroll-text fragments have been published. The present paper is an attempt, through study of the now available evidence, first, to precise the meaning of the expression rather more exactly than has yet been done, and second, to discuss the identity of the contemporary person, or rather, as we shall see, persons to whom the scroll-text authors applied it.