Timothy H. Lim, Holy Scripture in the Qumran Commentaries and Pauline Letters

has thoroughly revised his 1991 Oxford dissertation to produce this book.It is a work of about 10 years in the making.It is an inquiry into how we can get at the attitudes that ancient Jewish authors had toward their Scriptures.There is a continuum along which they can lie, from considering themselves (1) to be composing scriptures and thus freely altering the texts they had; to (2) to be rewriting scriptures, as in Jubilees; and to (3) merely to be commenting on their scriptures, which they considered the inviolable word of God.The concern that Lim brings to this study is that scholars have simply assumed that such ancient authors altered their texts, thus placing them somewhere in the first and second options on the continuum, but no clear evidence has been provided that this was the case.It has simply been assumed that citations that vary from the MT, SP, or Greek were altered.2. In order to address this sloppy approach to the question, Lim writes what is more of a programmatic essay than a detailed consideration of passages.There is the latter, but each case that is discussed is only an example used to prove a point.In his work Lim is seeking to sharpen, possibly even move to a higher level, the scholarly discussion of ancient exegesis of holy scriptures in the second temple period.He challenges several unquestioned working assumptions and brings more rigor to the methods used for examining quotes.However, the comprehensive, detailed work that makes use of Lim's methodological refinements remains to be done.The monograph has ten chapters arranged into five parts.The first two parts ("Prolegomena" and "Aspects of Ancient Bible Interpretation") cover a variety of preliminary matters.The second two parts come to the issue at hand and treat the pesherists ("Pesherite Exegesis and Hermeneutics") and Paul ("Pauline Interpretation of the Bible").The volume has a very brief summary for the final part.3. Lim takes as his starting point the light shed by the Dead Sea Scrolls on second temple scribal and interpretative practices and the textual situation.He shows why it is no longer possible to assume that a quote that diverges from the MT, SP, or Greek is an exegetical alter-