Black as Evil

[Stephen Hodge]

N. Ganesan wrote:

> this Persian influence
> in Hebrew texts will be under academic scrutiny. There are 100s
> of academic publications where Sons of Light versus
> Sons of Darkness led by "the Black one" originating
> in Iran. Will read them in the months ahead,
> updates about this Indo-Iranian heritage will take time.

As you will not doubt have found, the Sons of Light / Sons of Darkness
terminology is not associated with normative / biblical Second Temple
Judaism as far as we know but is characteristic of the sectarian
Community linked to portions of the Qumran finds (allusions are also
made to the terms in the Gospel of John and some of the Pauline
epistles) .  The consensus view identifies this Community with the
Essenes or, more likely, a breakaway sub-sect from them.  There are
fierce debated among Qumranologists about the history and origins of
the Community.   One view is that they evolved from the hasidim in
Judaea around 160BCE but others see them as late ultra-orthodox
arrivals back from Babylon around the same time or a bit earlier.
Among their core writings are the Damascus Document and the Rule of
the Community (using the terminology in question) which have been
extensively analyzed by Jerome Murphy-O'Connor.  His view is that both
these documents are composites with several literary strata but,
importantly for your thesis, he believes that they were written in
Babylon during the Persian period and later brought to Judaea.   A
useful recent book that deals with aspects of Zoroastrian influences
on the Community is "Apocalypticism in the Dead Sea Scrolls" by John
Collins (1997) Routledge.

I also suppose you have had or will have a look at the
pseudepigraphical Book of Jubilees and Enoch I & II -- these books
were both extremely influential although they never achieved canonical
status but they were essential reading not only for the Qumran
sectarians but were also known and quoted by New Testament writers.

Best wishes,
Stephen Hodge