The Meaning of the Key ("Demetrius")-Passage of the Qumran Nahum-Pesher

THE KEY-PASSAGE OF THE NAHUM-PESHER1 is that one in which, contrary to usage elsewhere in the Qumran Peshers, two Seleucid kings known to the author and audience of the text are referred to by their own proper names. The passage is of very great critical importance: secure identification of the two kings carries with it establishment of the temporal context within which this particular Pesher was composed. And indeed, since all the Qumran Peshers are clearly so closely inter-related, establishment of the period within which the Nahum-Pesher was composed is decisive also for the dates of composition of all the other texts in the group.2 The two kings mentioned are, respectively, a Demetrius, styled of Yawan, of Asiatic Greece, and an Antiochus. Now Antiochus here, as all scholars are agreed, is certainly that Antiochus IV Epiphanes who brought about the Maccabean uprising. The notion, however, that the of this passage is Demetrius III Eucaerus, the Seleucid king who ruled between about 95 and 88 B.C.E., a notion that is currently the regnant scholarly view of this matter, is, as I

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