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

JOHN R. LEVISON 183
A. R. C. Leaney, like Schweizer, argued that there is in 1QS 3–4 an
issue more fundamental than the two spirits; viz., the contrast between light
and darkness. The association is evident in 1QS 3.18–19: “two spirits…the
spirits of truth and of deceit. In a spring of light emanates the nature of
truth and from a well of darkness emerges the nature of deceit.” The particular
expressions of this fundamental conviction are, however, confused,
for “the writer is not clear whether he wishes to teach that man as such is
a combination of a good and a bad spirit or that mankind is divisible into
the good (arising from light) and the bad (arising from darkness).” 39
J. G. Gammie regarded the fundamental element of 1QS 3–4 to be
ethical dualism, which he defined as the division of people into opposing (e.g.,
good and evil) groups. According to Gammie, “1QS 3.13–4.26 teaches an
ethical dualism which at times is internalized into a psychological
dualism and at times externalized or further extended into a modified
cosmic dualism.” 40
H. Lichtenberger contended that 1QS 3.13–4.26 deals primarily with
the tension between God’s responsibility for creation and the presence of evil among the
faithful. The primary point of 1QS 3.18–19, for example, is that God has
created both spirits. The interpretation of the two spirits in 1QS 3.18 as
human dispositions which, in the following line, are related to cosmic,
mythological elements of light and darkness is secondary to the acknowledgment
that God in the beginning created both, that God helps the
children of light in the present cosmic battle with the angel of darkness,
and that God has set an eschatological limit to the existence of the spirit
of deceit.
A. E. Sekki characterized the teaching of the two spirits as a reinterpretation
of the community’s traditional understanding of the spirit. Because 1QS 3–4
is a reinterpretation, the traditional and revised views of the spirit coexist
at three interpretative levels in 1QS 3.13–4.26. (1) The use of the feminine
gender in the expression, “two spirits,” in 1QS 3.18–19 indicates that
these two spirits, as well as “the spirits of light and of darkness” in 3.25,
are human dispositions, for the word, “spirit,” in the feminine gender,
tends to designate human dispositions in the Qumran scrolls. (2) The use
39. Alfred R. C. Leaney, The Rule of Qumran and Its Meaning: Introduction, Translation
and Commentary (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1966), 37. The entire discussion, including
a survey of possible origins of this teaching and a valuable chart of relevant biblical,
Jewish, and Christian texts, spans pages 37–56. On the interpretation of Peter von der
Osten-Sacken, Gott und Belial: Traditionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zum Dualismus in den
Texten aus Qumran (SUNT 6; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1969), see below.
40. John G. Gammie, “Spatial and Ethical Dualism in Jewish Wisdom and
Apocalyptic Literature,” JBL 93 (1974): 381.