QUMRAN BIBLICALINTERPRETATION IN THE LIGHT OF ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN HISTORIOGRAPHY Ida Fröhlich Pázmány Péter Catholic Univesity, Budapest-Piliscsaba Modern Historiography— Historical Memory in the Ancient Near East Ancient Near Eastern cultures, which have produced a bulk of writ- ten material, have not let us detailed reports about their own history. Ancient Mesopotamia is a well documented culture, but the noticeable absence of historical literature has been noted repeatedly: “texts are lack- ing that would attest to the awareness of the scribes to the existence of a historical continuum in the Mesopotamian civilization of which they themselves and their tradition were only a part.” 1 Qumran was a partic- ular site of ancient Israelite culture. he library of the community liv- ing on the site contained, besides biblical manuscripts, works relecting theirworldviewandworksexpressingtheirideas,someofthemreferring to conlicts within their social spheres.Unfortunately, nothing about the backgroundoftheseconlictsorthehistoryofthewritershasbeenfound. Any regular historiography is absent. According to the expectations of modern history writing—or at least, in view of what ancient historiogra- phers like Herodotus and his Greek colleagues did—no detailed narra- tive in chronological order was written on the historyof the community. Still, one cannot say that they were not interested in history—in bibli- cal history, as well as their own history—since pesharim were written as interpretations of prophetic revelations. Nevertheless, the forms for the expression of interest in the past were very diferent from ancient Greek ones (and from modern ones). AncientIsraelhadalonghistoricaltradition,andaparticulartradition of history writing. he history of Israel’s past is shaped in various books 1 A.L. Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization (rev. ed.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ), .