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A Critical Re-Appraisal of Thiering's ‘Pesher Technique’ Thesis

ABSTRACT This article seeks to critically review, evaluate and repudiate the more critical aspects of Dr Barbara Thiering's thesis which strongly asserts that the early Christian Church was a natural development of the ‘Sons of Light’ community, which, she claims, was once situated at modern Qumran. More importantly, Thiering asserts that she has discovered that the authors of the books that comprise the New Testament made use of what she terms a ‘pesher technique’ (which was both a refinement and a development of a particular exegetical motif originally employed by certain of the Dead Sea Scroll writers), which when correctly interpreted by her provides the historian with a factual account of, inter alia, the life of Jesus of Nazareth as well as the activities of the early Church.