parshanut. Midrash in this looser sense characterizes a text no more precisely than calling it ‘an example of early Jewish Bible interpretation’ (Alexander 2000: 37 n. 5). However, he cautioned against an unreflected homogenization of the rabbinic and Qumran styles of exegesis in the invocation of the word ‘midrash’. When Steudel described her reconstruction of 4Q174 and 4Q177 as ‘A Midrash on Eschatology’ she had a specific meaning. It is clearly not ‘midrash’ in the generic sense of the term. This