The Treatise on the Two Spirits and the Literary History of the Rule of the Community

The full publication of the corpus of the Dead Sea Scrolls has revealed something of an erosion of the prominence of the dualistic ideas found in the Treatise of the Two Spirits. This is true both with reference to the collection as a whole and with regard to the Rule of the Community manuscripts in particular. Such a proportionally somewhat diminished profile of dualism as a central tenet of the groups behind the Scrolls warrants further reflection. In the present paper I try to argue that the light and darkness dualism found in the Treatise, which is often closely associated with the communities’ self-understanding—so much so that the terminology can be employed as a designation for the group—is remarkably absent from the communal legislation in 1QS v-ix//4QS. Thus the reception (or rather lack thereof) of this particular complex of ideas and frame of reference in 1QS v-ix is noteworthy. It is hoped that these observations together with the assessment of the more limited place of cosmic dualism in the scrolls corpus at large further encourage us to re-evaluate its once-unquestioned centrality. The Treatise was certainly studied and cherished at Qumran, but in light of the full spectrum of the evidence we need to re-evaluate its prominence alongside other competing ideological and theological paradigms.
Faced with the probability that the Treatise was incorporated into S at a late stage in the growth of the textual tradition, we must allow for the strong likelihood that the skilful compiler behind the Treatise was also the skilful compiler behind 1QS. It is essential, therefore, that future studies of the literary complexity of the Treatise are conducted in conversation with the scholarly endeavour for understanding the literary complexity of the S tradition as a whole. Close inspection clearly illustrates that the Treatise was certainly not incorporated wholesale but adjusted at the point of its inclusion into S.