The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls: The ... - josephprestonkirk

172 THE TWO SPIRITS IN QUMRAN THEOLOGY
to a man’s share in truth shall he be righteous and thus hate deceit, and
according to his inheritance in the lot of deceit he shall be evil through it,
and thus (25) loathe truth. For God has set them apart until the time of that
which has been decided, and the making of the new. He knows the reward
of their works for all the end of (26) [appointed tim]es, and he allots them
to the sons of man for knowledge of good […and thus] dec[id]ing the lots
for every living being, according to this spirit […] the visitation. 2
THE TWO SPIRITS: COSMIC BEINGS OR HUMAN DISPOSITIONS?
Within a decade of the publication of the Community Rule, scholars had
forged no less than three distinct approaches to the teaching of the two
spirits. K. G. Kuhn and A. Dupont-Sommer, drawing upon external parallels
with Zoroastrianism, interpreted the two spirits primarily as cosmic
beings locked in war with one another. In response to that approach, P.
Wernberg-Møller sought to demonstrate “on purely internal grounds” 3 —
from elements within the document itself—that these spirits are two inclinations
within each individual human being. O. Seitz, in a less influential
but nonetheless significant study, explained the teaching of the two spirits
as the product of the creative exegesis of 1 Sam 16:14, “And the spirit of the
Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord troubled him.”
By 1961, then, three approaches to the two spirits had emerged, yielding
a disorienting array of interpretations.
The Two Spirits and External Parallels
In articles published in 1950, K. G. Kuhn and A. Dupont-Sommer
agreed that the Qumran community had come under Iranian influence. 4
2. Translation from Elisha Qimron and James H. Charlesworth, “Rule of the Community
(1QS),” in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek Texts with English
Translations, Vol. 1, The Rule of the Community and Related Documents (ed. J. H.
Charlesworth et al.; PTSDSSP 1; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck; Louisville: Westminster
John Knox Press, 1994). Translations of other documents are from Florentino García-
Martínez, The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated: The Qumran Texts in English (2d ed.; Leiden:
Brill; and Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996).
3. Preben Wernberg-Møller, “A Reconsideration of the Two Spirits in the Rule of
the Community (I Q Serek III 13–IV 26),” RevQ 3 (1961): 441; italics mine.
4. André Dupont-Sommer wrote, “If Essenism had earlier been influenced largely
by Zoroastrianism [= Iranian religion], whose influence was not wholly eliminated
afterwards, the Master of Justice [Teacher of Righteousness] himself brought about