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

JOHN R. LEVISON 173
This hypothesis is credible, since the Jews had lived for centuries under
Persian domination. Two years later, both scholars had discovered in the
Community Rule, which contains the teaching of the two spirits (1QS
3.13–4.26), sufficient evidence to reaffirm resoundingly their conviction
that Zoroastrian influences had shaped the earliest beliefs of the Qumran
community. 5 Both independently cited numerous correspondences
between the teaching on the two spirits in 1QS 3–4 and the Gāthās of
Zarathustra, which comprises the primary repository of the teachings of
Zoroaster, whose influence lay at the headwaters of Iranian religion or
Zoroastrianism, centuries prior to the founding of the community at
Qumran. It will serve us well to dwell upon these parallels because they
constitute the most cogent defense of the interpretation of the two spirits
as cosmic beings locked in war with one another. The most significant
correspondences include:
There are (1) 1QS 3.18: “two spirits in which to walk until the
appointed time for his visitation, namely the spirits of truth and of deceit.”
Both Kuhn and Dupont-Sommer, by observing that the basic opposition
between two spirits could not be traced to the Hebrew Bible, freed themselves
to contend that this distinction was derived from Zoroastrianism.
Dupont-Sommer cited Yasna 45.2, of the Gāthās, as evidence: 6
“Yes, I shall speak of the two fundamental spirits of existence, of which
the virtuous one would have thus spoken to the evil one: ‘Neither our
thoughts nor teachings nor intentions, neither our preferences nor words,
neither our actions nor conceptions nor our souls are in accord.’” 7
(2) Kuhn argued more generally that the tenor of 1QS 3–4, with its
eschatological point of reference and an ethical dualism between right
actions and evildoing, corresponds quintessentially to the ethical dualism
and eschatological resolution of Yasna 30.3–5:
its reform under the influence of another mystical movement, Neo-Pythagoreans”
(The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Preliminary Survey [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1952]). Karl G.
Kuhn (“Die in Palästina gefundenen hebräischen Texte und das Neue Testament,”
ZTK 47 [1950]: 211) noted that Qumran theology, “accords surprisingly with the
original preaching of Zarathustra [= Zoroaster].” Kuhn wrote this although, as he
explained in a subsequent publication (“Die Sektenschriften und der iranische
Religion,” ZTK 49 [1952]: 297, 314), he had not yet seen the Rule of the Community.
5. Kuhn, “Sektenschriften,” 296–316; André Dupont-Sommer, “L’instruction sur
les deux Esprits dans le Manuel de Discipline,” RHR 142 (1952): 5–35.
6. “L’instruction,” 16–17, 19; on 1QS 3.19, 21.
7. All translations from the Gāthās are by S. Insler, The Ga¯tha¯s of Zarathustra
(Textes et mémoires 1; Acta Iranica 8; Leiden: Brill, 1975). For a description of the
good spirit, see in the Avesta, Yasna 47.