Apocalyptic Dualism

Dualism, a term first coined in 1700 by the English Orientalist Thomas Hyde, refers to a number of philosophical and religious thought systems characterized by a fundamental physical or metaphysical duality. In the history of religions, dualism was also applied to phenomena and doctrines beyond Zoroastrianism, including Gnosticism or Manichaeism as well as biblical thought patterns. Dualism has also been associated with apocalyptic thought. This article examines apocalyptic dualism in the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism. It first discusses dualism as a category of scholarship and the emergence of dualistic views in the earliest period of Jewish apocalypticism before turning to the different patterns of dualism represented in the Qumran corpus. It then considers dualism as expressed in the War Scroll from Qumran Cave 1, the pattern of cosmic dualism in the Qumran sectarian texts, eschatological dualism in later apocalyptic literature, and the reception of apocalyptic dualism in early Christian thought.