Background
The Habakkuk Commentary (1QpHab) was one of the original seven Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in 1947 and published in 1951. The thirteen-column scroll is a pesher, or "interpretation", of the Book of Habakkuk. The Commentary on Psalm 37 is one of the three pesharim on the Book of Psalms and the only other Dead Sea scroll to use the sobriquet. Psalm 37 has been said to have "the strongest literary and thematic links" with the Book of Habakkuk, compared to the other Psalms, and the language of Psalm 37 is borrowed by the Habakkuk pesherist in the commentary on Hab. 2:17. The similar language and themes of the Commentaries on Habakkuk and Psalm 37 have been suggested as evidence of common authorship, or at least similar interpretive methods.
Radiocarbon dating tests conducted on 1QpHab and 4QpPsa at the Arizona Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Facility gave a one standard deviation confidence interval of 104-43 BCE and a two sigma confidence interval of 120-5 BCE (97%); for 4QpPsa (4Q171) the one standard deviation confidence interval was 22-78 CE and the two sigma confidence interval was 5-111 CE. Earlier paleographic dating of 1QpHab indicated a date range of 30-1 BCE.
The prediction of column 7 of 1QpHab that "the final age shall be prolonged" is sometimes interpreted to mean that the Habakkuk Commentary was written approximately 40 years after the death of the Teacher of Righteousness—the time when the final age should have ended, according to the Damascus Document.
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