Reader Checked|OA|02/09/2012
Loren Stuckenbruck considers the degree to which dualistic concepts are coordinated with an understanding of human nature in four Jewish texts from the second century B.C.E.: (1) Ben Sira; (2) 1 Enoch 91–105 (esp. 91:1–10 and the so-called Epistle of Enoch); (3) Musar le-Mevin (also designated Instruction from Qumran Caves 1 and 4); and (4) the “Teaching on the Two Spirits” preserved in the Qumran Community Rule (1QS III:13–IV:26). Stuckenbruck argues that dualistic structures of thought played an important role in demarcating the identities of groups who saw themselves in religious conflict with either the conventionally wicked or with specific opponents. Ethical, cosmological, and anthropological dualisms were developed and deployed for this purpose, often in combination. The most elaborate conjunction of these three types of dualisms can be found in the Treatise of the Two Spirits. This text provided both the original community of the Treatise of the Two Spirits and, later, the Essenes with a theological framework that enabled them to come to terms with discordance between their religious ideologies and social identities on the one hand and their experience on the other.
| Light Against Darkness , "Introduction," 13.