Body and Soul, Purity and Impurity: Hodayot

The Qumran sectarian corpus offers us a unique opportunity to study the links between several central, underlying concepts in the ideology of the Dead Sea sect. Specifically, in keeping with our theme all “embodiment,” we seek to investigate a number of ideas that are prominent in the Qumran corpus that are connected with concepts of the body. These particular beliefs are linked in a complex interplay that we hope to explain and illustrate. While our title highlights body and soul and purity and impurity, we will also see that these issues are in turn closely linked to concepts of sin and atonement.  While this presentation will concentrate on sectarian texts, we will also refer to a variety of other Second Temple compositions. This will enable us to provide a context for our discussion.

Bodily Imagery in the Hodayot

The Hodayot (Thanksgiving) Scroll deals extensively with issues pertaining to the nature of the human body.  We should first look at passages that describe the human body in negative terms. It appears that these notions are not based on an assumption of a strict division between body and soul. Rather, the soul is regarded as apportioned into one of two predestined lots, good and evil.  What is at stake is how that soul will operate in light of the tendency of the body toward evil.  The soul of those predestined to be in the good lot follows the inclination to good, the other lot to evil. But the body and soul act as a unit, depending on to which lot that person is assigned.

These passages indicate that the sectarians saw the body and sexuality, even the organs of reproduction, in essentially negative terms.  In the Hodayot, as in much other sectarian literature, the operative terminology is not that of body and soul, but rather of “flesh” (Hebrew basar) and “spirit” (Hebrew ruah).  We will see that in general terms flesh and spirit function as a unity, but, on the other hand, sometimes appear in contexts similar to the dichotomy of body and soul found in early Christian literature and derived from the Hellenistic environment.

Flesh appears in numerous passages emphasizing the insignificant nature of the human being, molded of clay, formed of dust, and kneaded with water.  Although some ideas like these do appear in the Hebrew Bible, the emphasis on the lowly status of humanity is much greater in the Hodayot than anywhere in the Bible.  Here is an example: “What then is man?  He is Earth, [of dust] is the form, and to dust you will return.”  Or another passage: “but I am a vessel of clay; what am I?  Kneaded with water; for what may I be counted?  Much of the imagery, derived from the Bible, stresses the notion that humans were molded in the manner of an earthen vessel molded by a potter.  But this imagery can often be closely connected with sin and impurity:

“But I, from dust I have taken, [from clay] am I formed unto a flood of impurity and in shameful nakedness, to a compound of dust, knead[ed with water].” An extremely strong statement is: “I have a vessel of clay, kneaded with water, the foundation of shame, and a spring of impurity, a furnace of iniquity, and a building of sin, an erring spirit, perverse and without understanding.”

These texts are suffused with a feeling of complete unworthiness.  The author emphasizes mortality and humanity’s lowly state.  Many of these passages use terms denoting the origins of humans in the female reproductive organs, cast negatively as sources of impurity, and in menstrual impurity.  In this context, we often find the term “flesh.”  Some of these passages use the term as synonymous with the human body, but in other passages it refers to humanity, usually emphasizing the weakness and mortality of human beings.  In these passages, flesh is closely linked to concepts such as dust, vessel of clay, etc.  Here is an example: “And what is flesh, that it should have insight?  That which is [formed] of dust, how should it be able to guide its steps?  One passage refers to the cleansing of flesh, in which God removes “every spirit of evil from the inward parts of his (man’s) flesh” by cleansing it with the Holy Spirit.  This passage does indeed seem to indicate that the flesh itself is sinful.  Reference to one who stumbles and transgresses’ “iniquity of the flesh” clearly indicates that the flesh is somehow or another opposed to the forces of goodness.  Only God’s grace can prevent the flesh from transgressing.  Accordingly, flesh may be defined as “humanity without the ennobling gift of divine grace.”  Essentially, we have an opposition between the human as flesh and the divine spirit that is the means for humanity’s salvation.

The human being is therefore associated with sin.  Humans are generally sinful, even afflicted with a kind of original sin: “He (man) is in sin from the womb and onto old age in guilt of faithlessness.”  The sinfulness of man is traced back to a concept found in the treatise of the Two Spirits and the Rule of the Community.  According to this view, evil is found in humans when the spirit of evil overcomes that of good, the spirit of darkness winning out over that of light.

The only way to be cleansed from sin is to gain forgiveness and return to a path of holiness.  Only God’s grace makes this possible.  Sin can be forgiven and atoned for and, as a result, the sinner can be cleansed of his guilt.  Indeed, sin manifests itself through ritual impurity.  Repentance and ritual purification are closely linked in these texts.  Repentance takes place when God pours out his Holy Spirit.  The same notion is emphasized in the Rule of the Community, which makes very clear that one cannot become pure through ritual immersion while remaining morally or religiously sinful. (Ringgren). Several prayers to be recited by those ongoing ritual purification through immersion indicate clearly that lustrations are a process of repentance and that purity can only be attained through a process of sincere repentance.

Overall, one can sum up that the flesh symbolizes humanity’s total existence on this earth.  Connected to this term is the notion of humanity’s creatureliness and sinfulness, and the defective understanding of God’s plan.  However, the flesh does not appear to be in conflict with the spirit. In this way, these materials differ greatly from Hellenistic and later Christian approaches.  Since the flesh denotes a human being’s total corporate personality, as in the Hebrew Bible, the flesh serves as the locus of the struggle between the Holy Spirit and the spirit of iniquity.  At the end of days, this conflict between good and evil, light and darkness, will be decided in favor of good=light.  At that point, humanity will be purified totally.  In other words, the flesh does not belong to an ungodly sphere and the spirit to the godly. Both are susceptible to the forces of good and evil.  In this way, our sectarian texts from Qumran agree in part with the biblical concept of the corporate personality while, however, taking a much more negative view of humanity, indeed a pessimistic view, than that which is described in the Hebrew Scriptures.(Meyer in TDNT 7).