Midrash . . . which is at once related to the midrashim [but may be] distinguished from the previously known classes thereof, Midrash Halakhah and Midrash Haggadah."
The Book of Habakkuk is attributed, chronologically, to approximately the time of the Exile. The most probable datings fall between about 605-597 BCE, when the Babylonians conquered Egypt and, subsequently, the northern Kingdom of Judah, to whom Habakkuk prophesies. The Pesher of Habakkuk, the prophetic reinterpretation of the book of Habakkuk for "modern" times, probably dates to not later than the sixth decade BCE, when Pompey sacked Jerusalem. And as Brownlee (23) observes, the scroll itself was not written by the "Righteous Teacher," but by two principal scribes, and argues for a dating sometime in the first half of the first century CE, since the allusions to the "Kittim" are sufficiently generic to be applied to the coming of the Romans rather than to their presence in Palestine or at Jerusalem already.
Among the first comparisons of the interpretatio
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