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

180 THE TWO SPIRITS IN QUMRAN THEOLOGY
The Two Spirits and Biblical Exegesis
Unlike Kuhn, Dupont-Sommer, and Wernberg-Møller, O. Seitz
attempted to explain what he perceived to be the coexistence of various
dualisms in 1QS 3–4. Seitz uncovered this complexity by discerning a
relationship between passages from the Shepherd of Hermas, the
Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, and the Community Rule, and by tracing
their coalescence of conceptions primarily to 1 Sam 16:14: “And the spirit
of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord troubled
him.” 33 This biblical text emerged in Herm. Mand. 5.1.2a, 3–4 in the conviction
that
the holy spirit which dwells in you will be pure.…But if any quick temper
enters, at once the holy spirit, being delicate, is pressed for room…for it is
choked by the evil spirit…being defiled by the quick temper.
Therefore, abstain from quick temper, which is the most evil spirit; but
put on patience.…(5.2.8)
Seitz noted that 1 Sam 16:14 is unique in scripture as the text in which
God is said to send both an evil and a good spirit. Seitz took the verb,
choked, which occurs as well in the Septuagint version of 1 Sam 16:14,
as further evidence that this discussion in the Shepherd of Hermas is
spun exegetically from 1 Sam 16:14 (LXX 1 Kgs 16:14). 34 The centrality,
moreover, of “quick temper,” suggests the influence of the story of
Saul, who was flung into fits of rage when inhabited by the evil spirit.
This antithesis between two spirits is similar to the opposition of two
angels in Herm. Mand. 6.2.1:
spirits for human beings to follow. 1QS 3.18 reads l (as in 2 Sam 12:20) and not b.
In this interpretation, human beings situate themselves in either of the two spirits; the
two spirits are not situated within a human being. Nonetheless, other of Wernberg-
Møller’s observations were subsequently strengthened. For example, his contention
that 1QS 3.14 has less to do with two spirits than with varieties of spirits was borne
out by Sekki’s (Meaning, 195) observation that the closest parallel to this formulation
occurs in 1QS 20, where the expression refers to the varieties of spiritual perfection
of priests, which are the basis for their rank in the community. 1QS 3.14 suggests that
the varieties of spiritualities within individual members of Qumran may lie rather more at
the forefront of 1QS 3–4 than does the division of the members from nonmembers based upon
the two spirits of 1QS 3.18–19.
33. Otto Seitz, “Two Spirits in Man: An Essay in Biblical Exegesis,” NTS 6 (1959):
82–95. He also discerned (86) adumbrations of the lying spirit of 1 Kgs 22:21–23 in
1QS 4.9 and Herm. Mand. 3.1, 2, 4.
34. Although Seitz did not cite Pseudo-Philo, Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum (L.A.B.),
this interpretation is especially evident in L.A.B. 60.1–2, where the evil spirit is said
to have choked Saul.