And within the Essene community, the pesher method took prophecies line by line and claimed that the events of the present were the real fulfilment of what was spoken many generations before. There is an underlying logic to this: it was agreed on all sides that the prophecies had not yet been fulfilled; the sect believed that they were living in the days of fulfilment; therefore the scriptures must somehow refer to them—whatever their ‘original’ meaning may have been.
