Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

At 11.54 10/05/99 -0400, peter_kirk AT SIL.ORG wrote:
>Thank you for your interesting comments on DSS, which were however not 
>really relevant to my own posting. 

Now Peter, we both know what your post was about. However, if you note how
the title changed (to a subject that interests me a lot) the thread has
moved on from what it was originally about. This process is pretty normal
in a mailing list! I just had a few thoughts simmering since Rolf talked
about the lateness of 1QS, and they were brought out by your post.

>My own argument would be that the 
>Kittim, whether Seleucids or Romans, would not have been the original 
>referents of Habakkuk's prophecy. 

Clearly not.

>For I am assuming that Habakkuk's 
>primary intended reference in 1:6 is to the Babylonians of 
>Nebuchadnezzar's time. 

On this I can't be so sure, though probably not the Seleucids. We know that
when the context of a text is lost, we have great difficulty in
understanding the original referents. Take Judith's "Nebuchadnezzar king of
the Assyrians": fortunately there is basically enough evidence to say that
this is in fact a representation of a Seleucid king, Antiochus IV. Without
the clarity of that evidence would we assume that the referent was actually
Nebuchadnezzar? We don't know when Habakkuk was written, so we can't be
sure of its referents until we can muster enough evidence to decide. Judith
does show the tendency to use the Nebuchadnezzar image for the writers own
purposes. When did such a tendency start?

>This would apply even if Habakkuk is dated 
>along with other prophetical books in Hasmonean times; these are 
>presented as referring to the Babylonian exile. We need to distinguish 
>here between the literal referents in the story as presented by the 
>prophet, who must surely be the real Babylonians, 

(Dunno about that.)

>and any possible 
>symbolic reference to the Seleucids. But the DSS commentary on 
>Habakkuk takes a different perspective (reference time etc) and so 
>uses different tenses.

This is true. One can though make interesting parallels between pHab and
other documents of the era such as Daniel (assuming my dating is correct:
C-14 only tells us when a text was copied), both of which seem to me to
have the same basic purpose, to show that past prophecy was coming true --
Habakkuk by (re-) interpretation showing fulfillment, Daniel by revelation
of "newly discovered" text whose contents had mostly been fulfilled.


Ian