Scrolls from Qumran Cave I

were written late, but contain traditional materials of the community's common apocalyptic exegesis of prophetic works (or of what the community conceived as being prophetic, including Psalms and Odes).

The exegetical lore, bearing elements coming from many periods of the sect's life, evidently was transmitted orally until finally precipitated into writing, under lemmata from a biblical scroll. Such a setting can be reconstructed thanks to (1) the disagreements between lemmata and interpretation (pěšer), (2) the homogeneity of biblical interpretation at Qumrân especially in instances of bizarre or wholly arbitrary applications to their sect or times, (3) the reference to various persons and events of several periods indicating the cumulative character of the materials, and (4) the existence of single copies only of the commentaries, as opposed to multiple copies of works belonging to other categories of literature, suggesting that many if not all of the pěšarîm are autographs.