Ebook: Koheleth: His Language and Thought

For the scholar anxious to have his introductory material readily available for painless, intellectual consumption, followed by swift pedagogical transmission, there can be little question that Ecclesiastes is one of the most teasing, even exasperating, books of the Hebrew Bible. Successive generations of commentators have failed to reach that elusive consensus about virtually any aspect of the book, and those brave enough to unlock the crammed store of imaginative scholarship amassed over the years are likely to be overwhelmed by the welter of views which will come sallying forth. The range of opinion is extensive and confusing, starting out with the traditional attribution to an old and cynical Solomon in the tenth century-B.C., and reaching the opposite extreme with H. Graetz’s claim that the book reflects the conditions of the Herodian period and is to be dated at the end of the first pre-Christian century. The intellectual stimulus for Qoheleth’s philosophy has been variously traced to Babylon, Egypt and Greece, while some have even hazarded the view that what is here recorded is none other than authentic Hebrew thought. As to the language of the book, its presence in the Hebrew Bible has convinced few linguists that it is enough to say that it is written in late Biblical Hebrew. Dialectical similarities have been sought in Phoenician, Aramaic and Mishnaic Hebrew, an Indo-German source has been suggested, and the hypothesis has been advanced, and vigorously discussed and defended, that the text is a translation of an Aramaic original. A remark made in connection with this linguistic controversy by one of those at its centre, Professor Mitchell Dahood, serves as a useful summary of the position regarding all the problems raised by what Elias Bickerman has defined as one of the “four strange books of the Bible”: “The discussion happily shows no sign of abating” (Biblica 43 [1962], p. 349). It is against such a colourful and complex backdrop that this new book on Ecclesiastes makes its appearance.