Throughout human history we humans have been predisposed to divide people into two groups — insiders and outsiders, us and them, children of the light and children of the darkness. That was certainly the case for the Essenes — the first century Jewish sect that separated from the Temple in Jerusalem, set up an aesthetic community on the Dead Sea, and copied and preserved what we know as the Dead Sea Scrolls. 

At the Israel Museum, the Shrine of the Book exhibit displays fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls. They are housed in a structure made to resemble one of the scroll jars in which the scrolls were found. The top of this architectural facsimile, pictured above, is white — representing the Children of the Light (the Essenes). Just a few metres away is a black monolith, also pictured above, that represents the Children of Darkness (the compromised Temple leadership and many others). White vs. Black. Good vs. Evil.

Some good things came out of the Essenes’ separation from earlier tradition — the Dead Sea Scrolls, for one. But with religious fervor, they also perpetuated the division of people into two kinds of people — good and bad. Acceptable and rejected.

Maybe we are right to divide humans into two groups. Maybe not. Perhaps the very best division is between those who divide people into groups and those who do not.