The Rhetorical Effect of the Dualistic
Language in 1QM
From a Deconstructive Reading
Yoon Lee (Ewha Womans University)
I. Introduction
Qumran scholarship has long discussed whether Qumranic
dualism is an acculturated phenomenon, of which origin would be found either in
Persia or in Greece, or it is rather rooted in Hebraic tradition. Following
this interest, scholarly efforts are devoted to categorizing Qumranic dualism
based on its variety of features under a certain name such as cosmic dualism,
psychological dualism, and ethical dualism, or under a hyphenated name of these
different dualisms. In the midst of the overflowing discussions about the
origin, categorization, and definition of dualism, the rhetorical power of Qumranic
dualism is put aside or ignored totally, even if it would be the essential
issue of its literary function. Here in this present study, I will try to
examine the rhetorical effect of Qumranic dualism, by way of lifting up the
socio-political dimension behind the seemingly neutral dualistic terms such as
the “Sons of Light” and the “Sons of Darkness” in 1QM, the War Scroll. In order
to explore the rhetorical effect or power of the dualistic language in 1QM, I
will attempt to employ a deconstructive reading.
II. What is a Deconstructive Reading?
This question seems a roundabout question for a more
direct question, “What is deconstruction?” As widely known, Derrida resists defining deconstruction in a certain fixed
set of sentences. Respecting Derrida’s such resistance, here in this present
study, I prefer to use “a deconstructive reading,” which tells that the present
study is processed with the imports of the Derridean deconstruction.
Deconstruction is principally to deconstruct the center, which is believed to
control everything else around, down, and above it. Due to the presence of the
center, everything else becomes marginalized. The disproportionate relationship
between the center and margin is then configured in “a violent hierarchy.”[1]
The center is superior to the margin in terms of everything. The center is
good, ideal, truthful, essential, etc. The margin is the opposite in its
nature.
Derrida casts doubt on the very presence of the
center. Why is the center center? Why is the margin margin? What makes the
center to be the center and the margin to be the margin? His deconstruction then
moves on to the deconstructive reversal/inversion, through decentering the
center. Yet, this is just a temporal process to overturn the hierarchical
system. This process reveals that the center is nothing but the absence of the
margin. This process of deconstruction shows that the center is no longer the center,
so is the margin.
I will employ a deconstructive reading to divulge
how the dualistic language in 1QM decenters the imperial logic of power. In so doing,
this reading will show what kind of rhetorical effects the dualistic language
of 1QM creates.
III. Socio-Political Dimension of the Dualistic Language in 1QM
Before proceeding to a deconstructive reading
of the dualistic language in 1QM, I think we have to look back so as to see
what kind of discussions have so far been made around the issue of dualism in
1QM. The most famous and important discussion about this issue is definitely
the five-year long arguments between John J. Collins and Philip R. Davies.[2]
This brief examination will not only sketch the traditional interpretation of
the dualism in 1QM, but also show what we have long ignored in the discussions
about Qumranic dualism.
Collins attempts to trace a (linear)
development from nationalistic to universal mode in Jewish apocalyptic
literature. Collins uses dualism as an indicator that a piece of literature
comes closer to universal apocalypticism. Against this argument, Davies
basically disagrees over the redactional reconstruction arranged by Collins.
Therefore, Davies has a totally different order of redaction of 1QM.
The discussions between Collins and Davies can
be defined as a variation of developmental theory. Because both of the two
scholars begin their arguments without challenging the notion that Jewish
apocalyptic literature developed from a nationalistic mode to a
universal-dualistic one. Collins and Davies basically argue over whose
redactional reconstruction would be much closer to truth. Both scholars have no
doubt that dualism is nearly synonymous with, or a prominent feature of, universal
apocalypticism.
However, I suggest that the dualistic language
in 1QM has nothing to do with nationalism or universalism. The dualistic
thinking pattern is imbued with both nationalistic and universal modes of
expressions. As a simple example, the Treatise of Two Spirits in 1QS, the best
example of Qumranic dualism, reveals a nationalistic stance, as shown in the
phrase, “God of Israel”(3.24). Above
all, even with the predominant dualistic-apocalyptic mode of presentation, 1QM basically
schemes an all-out attack on the Kittim, who are generally identified with a
historical entity, either Greeks or Romans. Dualism does not eliminate
nationalistic thinking or expression. Dualism rather serves as a vehicle to
deliver the authorial community’s nationalistic scheme in a roundabout way. The
issue of Qumranic dualism needs to be examined from a different angle than the
binary structure of nationalism versus universalism.
Thus, here I propose that the dualistic terms, “light”
and “darkness,” can be viewed from a socio-political perspective, not merely
from a theological one. The dualistic terms are signifiers to refer to binary structure
such as the visible and the invisible, and the represented and the underrepresented
in both domestic and international society. The Qumran community was the
invisible and underrepresented, when compared with the national center of
Jerusalem and the imperial center of Rome (or Damascus). The dualistic language
in 1QM serves as a literary device to present the community’s social status in
an inverted way, as if they were the “Sons of Light” already in their present
time. The dualistic terms, the “Sons of Light” and the “Sons of Darkness,” need
to be understood against the community’s social-economic-political background.
The strategy of inversion by means of the final war must have reflected the
community’s dissatisfaction with the current order.
IV. What is the Center to be Decentered in 1QM?
Deconstruction is not to deconstruct the structure
itself, but to deconstruct the structure which fixes a certain thing central and
essential, and as a result, marginalizes and non-essentializes everything else.
This tendency leads us to perceive the structure in a binary system. This significant
Derridean concept is derived from his critical reflection on the Western philosophical
tradition, according to which divides the thing into two terms, for example,
writing versus speech, body versus mind, and so forth. Derrida shows that the
center cannot become center without the margin. Without the margin, the center
remains the absence, not reaches its totality, wholeness, perfection, and
presence.
1QM begins with the prelude to the war between
the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness. The Sons of Light are specified as the
Sons of Levi, Judah, and Benjamin, and the exiles in the wilderness. The Sons
of Darkness are identified with the Kittim; their head is Belial. Even with
this seemingly apparent binary participants and the standard of such division,
the next columns following col. 1 draw our attention. Cols. 2-9 constitute the
military matters such as concrete battle arrangements, weaponry, and military
organization. We have no other literary example to match this much concrete and
practical military literature like 1QM in ancient Jewish literature.
The authorial community behind 1QM perceives
the popular notion that military power makes a nation superpower. The
Habakkuk Pesher makes sarcastic remarks how military power subjugates many
territories and boundaries. With a slightly different angle, the Book of
Maccabees reports that because of its military power, Rome becomes the master
of the world (1Macc 8). This contextual notion that power is derived from, and
inevitably related to military power, lies before the Qumran community. Military
power is the center of the imperial ideology of power. Military power
illuminates the center with radiant, bright light. This notion is what both
Jerusalem and Rome had confided in. This is the time to deconstruct the center,
militarism.
V. What is the “Deconstructive Reversal”?
Derrida attempts to disclose that speech favored
as the central, natural, and essential is nothing but another form of writing
at origin, and that writing perceived as perverted, secondary, and derivative
can be central, not marginal. This is the deconstructive reversal to invert the
hierarchy taken long for granted. Yet, Derrida defines his position by saying
that this deconstructive reversal is a temporal process, not the end of the work
of deconstruction. The end is just to disclose the possibility that the
prejudiced center/margin division cannot be accepted as truth.
As said above, the dualistic language, light
and darkness, can be viewed as signifiers for social status, not only for religious/theological/ethical
value of virtue and vice. 1QM perceives its contemporary’s popular notion that
the social status is defined by the social-economic-political power in an
individual dimension. An individual’s social status is a miniature of the
further extension of the political status of a nation. A nation’s status is
defined by its military power. Against this logic of power, 1QM dares to flip
over the very standard of the logic of power.
The Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness are
symmetric with respect to their respective covenantal relationship with God. The
imperial center remains the absence of the colonial margin. Military power
remains empty threat without the conquered territory and peoples. Imperial,
military power is no longer the absolute center. If the standard of the center
per se is not accepted, then the center is no longer able to stand as the
center. The military center is flipped over by the different standard, set by
the margin. That is, the covenant. The Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness
stand symmetric with respect to the covenant.
VI. What is “Under Erasure”?
Derrida clarifies that a strategy of inversion or reversal does not aim at
simply reversing the position, but at displacing and further deconstructing the
present system of hierarchical power. The present system of power and the
present logic of power are “under erasure.”
Derrida borrows this term from Heidegger. Here I simply quote Spivak, the
English translator of Derrida’s book, Of
Grammatology: “This is to write a word, cross it out, and then print both
word and deletion” (Of Grammatology,
xiv, e.g. Being). The crossed-out word tells that the word is inaccurate, yet
it is still necessary. For Heidegger, the crossed-out Being shows that the
familiar notion of the seemingly absolutely stable concept of Being reflects
only a part of Being, i.e., an inarticulable presence. For this unstable and
the on-going presence, Derrida uses a word, “trace,” for the “mark of the
absence of presence, an always already absent present, of the lack at the
origin” (Of Grammatology, xvii).
1QM perceives that military power is under
erasure. Military power is inaccurate, but stands necessary to signify our
familiar yet not proper notion of power. Military power is the trace for the
mark of the absence of power. Even if 1QM borrows the military strategy,
weaponry, and formations, the authorial community perceives that military power
is paradoxically under erasure during the final war. The old prophetic teaching
is repeated here. Foreign military power is a mere divine instrument to punish
and then to restore the people of God.
VII. What is “Dangerous Supplement”?[3]
Then, how can we understand the fact that 1QM
employs the military tactics, even though it would be a temporal adoption? This
strategy of adoption and adaptation can be understood as a strategy of “dangerous
supplement.”
This term,
“supplement,” originally comes from Jean
Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau recognizes that even though writing is merely
an artificial supplement to speech, which
is natural, it is dangerous.
The danger, Rousseau confesses in his Confession,
is the temptation for
embellishment and refinement the writing so as to make his writing come much closer to his speech. From this
Rousseu’s perception, Derrida finds a double meaning of suppléer in French. That is, “to add on to,” on the
one hand, and “to substitute for,” on the other hand.
If focusing on the practical contents of 1QM,
the author seems to have simply mimicked foreign military tactics and organization,
and have then supplemented them with slight modification in accordance with
biblical regulations. The outlook of the military features of 1QM seems nothing
but a simple addition to much greater schemes of foreign military power. The
development of a military writing such as
1QM, particularly by the marginal community, seems to have been a trivial supplement to the
imperial practice of military power in its contemporary
society. Yet, it is
a dangerous supplement, given
that it aims at complementing, by way of adding on to something that seems already complete, and
finally substituting for it. 1QM
adds only to replace the imperial logic of power, which is founded upon
militarism, as writing ends up replacing speech and remains perpetually instead
of speech.
VIII.
What is “Différance”
in the Dualistic Language?
One of the most important Derridean concepts is
différance. This concept originally comes from Saussure. According to Saussure,
language is a system of differences, recalling that words produce meanings based
on their relation to other words. Put it simply, tree becomes tree, because
tree is not a horse, and tree is different from horse. Based on this
perception, Saussure claims that language is a system of differences without positive terms (e.g. X is not Y).[4] Thus, according to Saussure, no word has its intrinsic
meaning in and of itself. The meaning is made possible “by what exists outside
it.”[5]
Derrida develops and articulates the Saussurean
concept of differential system of language into the next level of linguistics. The
newly-coined word, “différance,” is Derrida’s development of the Saussurean
linguistics. That is, the meaning of a word, which lies in the system of
difference, is deferred until it is differentiated from something else. In so
doing, Derrida joins the temporal deferral and the spatial difference into one
phenomenon, so that Derrida shakes the Western philosophical-theological
foundation, according to which the Being is set in a certain point of space and
its meaning is unchangeable, regardless of time.
The dualistic terms, the “Sons of Light” and
the “Sons of Darkness,” can better be understood from the concept of différance.
The meaning of the “Sons of Light” is only made by the presence of the “Sons of
Darkness.” This tells that the two stand in a differential relationship. Yet,
the presence/meaning of the “Sons of Light” is deferred until the end of the
war. The wartime is the eschatologically appointed time in 1QM. The wartime is considered as the “crucible”(@rcm) period in 1QM (e.g. 17.1, 9). The Qumran
community is aware of the deferred temporal gap between the present and the
future. The “crucible” period lies in between the present and the future. The
real presence/meaning of the “Sons of Light” is deferred up to the end of the war.
During the time of the “crucible,” the power/presence/meaning of Belial and his
lot are under erasure; their trace remains for long. Yet the future in the wake
of the war is the “absolute future” to come.[6]
The
responsibility for the Qumran community to take is to take hold onto to the covenantal
relationship with God of Israel. Here
the Qumran community goes back to the old prophetic precept; military power is
temporal, and foreign military power is another symbol to signify the divine
love for Israel.
IX.
Summary
In this present study, I have challenged the
predominant scholarly orientation in the study of Qumranic dualism. I have here
made an effort to lift up the socio-political dimension behind the dualistic
language in 1QM. The dualistic language in 1QM casts doubt why military power
is the center of the logic of power discourse. The seemingly marginal power of
the people of God can be central, essential, and superior with a deconstructive
lens. Foreign military power is nothing but the absence of the power without
the marginalized people and their presence. Yet, the deconstructive reading is
effective to make the main purport of 1QM clear. That is, the meaning/presence
of the Sons of Light is not only being differentiated from that of the Sons of
Darkness, but also their presence/meaning is being deferred until the end of
the final war. During the deferred temporal gap, the covenantal faith serves as
the central holder of the Sons of Light.