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

176 THE TWO SPIRITS IN QUMRAN THEOLOGY
early Zoroastrianism, about which almost nothing is known. 17 Many of
the parallels which Kuhn and Dupont-Sommer adduced do admittedly fit
in this category. Belief in God’s aid to the suffering righteous, for example,
is hardly limited to Zoroastrianism. H. G. May, moreover, subsequently
garnered a wide variety of scriptural texts, such as the cosmic
battle between Gog and Magog in Ezekiel 38–39, to create a believable
biblical context for this sort of dualism. 18 Nötscher observed as well that
Zoroastrianism underwent changes in the course of a millennium and
that the specific dualism between light and darkness which is fundamental
to Qumran dualism is less characteristic of the Gāthās (the primary evidence
for early Zoroastrianism) than of the later Avesta. This particular
dualism, then, can hardly be adduced as an indication of Zoroastrian
influence on Qumran theology.
There exists, moreover, another breach in the foundation of
Zoroastrian influence. The influence of early Zoroastrianism cannot satisfactorily
explain the struggle of the two spirits within the human heart
(e.g., 1QS 4.23) or the capacity of a child of light to sin. This aspect of
1QS 3–4 compelled Dupont-Sommer, without the ability to appeal to
Zoroastrian parallels, to conjecture awkwardly, “The idea seems to be
that, if the two spirits in each person are unequally apportioned, they are
found together equally: the two forces, in some manner, are equal…” 19
Kuhn too acknowledged this tension, recognizing that (as he perceived
it) in 1QS 3.15–4.19 two groups of people are divided under their respective
spirits of light and falsehood, which war in cosmic battle with one
another, while in 1QS 4.20–23, the spirits of truth and falsehood are said
to struggle within each individual. He explained this tension in two ways.
First, he regarded the tension as a matter of terminology rather than substance,
for even in 1QS 3.22, the children of light are led astray in the
context of a cosmic battle by the prince of darkness and his coterie of evil
spirits. What 1QS 4.20–23 expresses as an anthropological dualism—a
struggle within an individual—is much the same as the cosmic dualism of
1QS 3.15–19, in the course of which the righteous are led astray. Kuhn
contended, secondly, that “this terminological distinction lies in this, that
17. Friedrich Nötscher, Zur theologischen Terminologie der Qumran-texte (BBB 10; Bonn:
Peter Hanstein Verlag, 1956), 86–92. Kuhn (“Sektenschriften,” 309) had already
acknowledged this.
18. Herbert G. May, “Cosmological Reference in the Qumran Doctrine of the Two
Spirits and in Old Testament Imagery,” JBL 82 (1963): 1–14. He cited as well several
instances in which the qualities of God were hypostatized and “thought of as angelic
beings” (e.g., Ps 85:11–14) in an attempt to identify a plausible biblical basis for
explaining the origins of the two angelic spirits.
19. Dupont-Sommer, “L’instruction,” 29.