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

54 QUMRAN AND THE ENOCH GROUPS
in the case of the Epistle of Enoch, the Testaments seem to be familiar with,
or to have used, some material preserved in Qumran. 35 The language of
the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs presents even closer similarities with
the sectarian documents of Qumran than does the Epistle of Enoch.
However, the most typically sectarian elements are conspicuously
missing in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, which seem rather to follow
the trajectory of the Epistle of Enoch in emphasizing the freedom and
responsibility of angels and humans. The duel between God and Belial
is a real conflict, not a prestaged drama. There is no doubt that Belial will
be defeated at the end (T. Levi 18:12–13), but until that moment, the devil
is a rebellious and aggressive challenger of God’s power and authority.
The human soul is the battlefield. Belial has a key for direct access to
human selfhood; thus, Belial placed “seven spirits of deceit” in every
human being “against humankind” (cf. T. Reu. 2:1–2). These seven spirits
of deceit interact against the seven spirits that God placed in the human
being, but more significantly, they interact with the last of these spirits,
“the spirit of procreation and intercourse, with which come sins through
fondness for pleasure” (2:8).
The distance of the anthropology of the Testaments from the Qumran
doctrine of the spirits could not be greater. In the Testaments, God is not
the source of both the good and evil spirits; the presence of evil spirits is
both against God and against humankind. Not only is the internal struggle
a deviation from the original plan of creation; its result also has not
been preordained by God. The number of good and evil spirits is the
same in each individual, which guarantees humans the fairness of the
struggle and gives the last word over to human responsibility. It is the
“conscience of the mind” that ultimately makes the difference. “So understand,
my children, that the two spirits await an opportunity with humanity:
the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. In between is the conscience
of the mind which inclines as it will” (T. Jud. 20:1–2).
Although no longer ignoring the Mosaic Torah as done in the entire
pre-Maccabean Enochic literature, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs follow
the traditional Enochic teaching that the power of evil makes obedience
to the law insufficient in order to gain salvation. With Qumran, the
Testaments share the paradox of a human being who does good but is evil.
What one is becomes more important than what one does. What one is
depends on the cosmic conflict between God and Belial. Yet, unlike Qumran,
there is a way out. The answer is to fill the heart with an undivided
35. Robert A. Kugler, From Patriarch to Priest: The Levi-Priestly Tradition from Aramaic
Levi to Testament of Levi (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996).