Qumran: Identity, Spirits, Science and Dualism

1. The topic of my research is the coexistence and dualism of determinism and free will or, natural evil and moral evil, within the texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls. I am interested in this subject because I was intrigued by the debate it sparked among scholars and scientists alike. When applied to a religious backdrop it seems to be an especially complicated puzzle which can’t be easily solved rationally or scientifically. As I am determined to know what made ancient people tick, this subject falls near the center of my personal interests.

I noted that the authors of the Biblical texts seem also to make no attempt at harmonizing their implications of the importance of human choice with their unwavering belief that all things were pre-planned by God and therefore unchangeable by any human choice or lack thereof. In my research I discovered a few instances where a given scholar mentions this similarity between the Dead Sea scrolls and the Bible then ends the discussion post haste, as if it cannot be rationalized in the scrolls if it was not rationalized in most other aspects of Judaism or Christianity. Other scholars content themselves with the very obvious overtones of determinism or predestination within the scrolls, specifically The Community Rule (1QS), and fail to see any dualism beyond that point. I was even more interested after I resolved to understand the terms “determinism” and “free will” then discovered that perhaps our understanding of those terms can’t be applied to ancient texts, or the minds that created them, as we would like them to be.

2. Vanderkam, in 1994, Baker, in 2004, Vermes, in 2004, Alexander, in 2006, and Timmer, in 2009, agree that predestination is given the central position in Essene theology...

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