Loading...To celebrate the tenth-year anniversary of the blog on this past April 18, I’ve been posting all the previous April 18 posts. This one is from 2020; in it I discuss one of my favorite books of the Bible, Ecclesiastes. The post was originally part of a series of posts on “Wisdom Literature” in the OT, as I indicate at the outset.
******************************
In my previous post I pointed to the “Wisdom” literature of the Old Testament (usually said to comprise Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes), suggesting that this is a good time for all of us to ingest some wisdom from those who went before. The book of Ecclesiastes has long been my favorite in the Old Testament. It seems so modern in so many ways. Even though written over 2000 years ago, it considers ageless questions about what the *point* of it all is.
If you don’t know it, it’s worth reading; it won’t take long. If you do know it, it’s worth reading again. To provide some orientation to the overall theme of the book, here is what I say about it in my book The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction, (I begin with the final paragraph from the last post)
******************************
Of the Wisdom books found in the Hebrew Bible, one, the book of Proverbs may be considered a representative of what we might call “positive wisdom.” This is the more typical form of wisdom, both within Judaism and cross-culturally. Positive wisdom attempts to describe the general orderliness of the world and to explain how people should live in accordance with it. Job and Ecclesiastes have a contrary emphasis, and can be labeled “skeptical wisdom.” These are writings that lament the world’s lack of order or the impossibility of understanding the world, and they try to explain how best to cope with life in light of this impossibility.
Ecclesiastes
The book of Ecclesiastes is an example of “skeptical” wisdom, but it is a very different kind of book from Job. Here the dominant question is not about why the innocent suffer, or even about suffering at all, per se; it is about how to make sense of this world. We have seen that the writers of Proverbs – not to mention the historians, prophets, and poets we have read – seemed to understand the world. It made sense to them; there was a coherence to it, a logic to it, a divine purpose behind it all. But other people have never felt that way. For them, it is hard to understand why the world is the way it is, why things happen the way they do, why we should strive to be good – or even strive to be rich, or intelligent, or influential. What is the meaning of life? Why are we here? What will happen to us when we are gone? For anyone who refuses to settle for easy answers to these questions, the book of Ecclesiastes is a treasure trove. Here is an author who admits that he doesn’t know the answers – although he very much wants to ask the questions. And in the end he decides that even if
This is on one of the most intriguing books of the Bible. Want to learn more? Join the blog! Click here for membership options
Thanks Bart. Very interesting introduction. Very sobering. Everything must go and everything will be forgotten “How shall we then live?” Alternatively, maybe everything will be remembered? (Omniscient deity, akashic records, book of life etc or even the new physics concept of conservation of information). Which is more sobering, the amnestic outcome or mnemonistic outcome? Both are sobering in different ways!
When I was in Air Force basic training, I was having some issues with being in the military as I had been a pacifist for years at the time. I knew going in that my job might involve the taking of human life, but handling actual guns and other military equipment made it all the more real and I was having issues. Not being very religious, I nevertheless went to the chaplain. He gave me a bible and said to read Ecclesiastes and I’ve loved the book ever since. It was the first book of the Bible I had ever read as a distinct book (i.e. not picking a few verses and moving on). It showed me that my own struggles with meaning and morality had been around for a very, very long time. And that was enough.
Also “Qoheleth” sounds suspiciously Klingon.
What is the name of the scholarly book – and who is/are the author(s) – that shows the four gospels side-by-side?
Also what do you call this type of book, eg, Gospel Parallels?
I’m thinking that it’s authored by a man and woman with the same last name but maybe that’s the English/Greek Interlineal translation or something like that.
Do any of the books like this include parts of the Gospels of Thomas and Peter that have historical value?
I used to own these books but recently donated them since I hadn’t looked at them for so long. Oh well, I donated a lot more other books than these that I’m sure I’ll never want to use again.
I think Kurt Aland is the author I was trying to think of. But I can’t find anything by him in my local library or on my Kindle that includes all 4 gospels.
Another name I came across is Burton H Throckmorton. Would you recommend him?
Maybe Half Price Books will still be trying to resell the copy of Aland I sold to them a couple months ago.
Throckmorton gives only the Synotics. Aland’s is Synopsis of the Four Gospels; you can find it on amazon.
Yes, that book can be called Gospel Parallels or Synopsis of the Gospels. I think the best is the one by Kurt Aland, Synopsis of the Four Gospels. Make sure you get the right one, though! He has ones with simmilar names that give the texts in Greek! I know in the Greek one he does refer to non-canonical parallels, but I cann’t remember if he does in the English one or not.
Bart, I have heard the assertion that the following 3 Early Christian apocryphal works are agreed by scholars to be gnostic:
1) Protoevangelium of James
2) Ascension of Isaiah
3) Odes of Solomon
Bart, from what u recall, does the scholarly consensus agree that these works are of gnostic origin? Would appreciate if you went 1 by 1.
Thanks
No, these books are not Gnostic and are not considered Gnostic by scholars generally.
Bart, is the Gospel of James a book that is consistent with the catholic (small c) tradition?
Well the people who put it in the canon certainly thought so! But do you mean about faith and works? Yup, pretty much. Just agreeing with proopositional statements about God (he exists, Jesus is his son, Jesus’ death brought salvation) is not enough: your life needs to reflect it.
Bart, I am asking about the Gospel of James not the epistle
Oh! You’ll need to ask your question again then, since I don’t have the thread of our back and forth and don’t remember what you were asking about.
I asked: Is the Gospel (protoevangelium) of James a book that is consistent with the catholic (small c) tradition?
It’s actually not an easy question to answer. It depends on what you mean by the catholic tradition. Elements of it were certainly acceptable; but there were disputes about other parts, in particular the identity of Jesus’ brothers as sons of Joseph from a previous marriage. Jerome and others took offense at this because in their view Joseph, like Mary, must have been a virgin for his entire life. THe book then came to be condemned in the West; eventually it was “replaced” by the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew. So definitely in the upper case Catholic tradition it had problems. But there is nothing much to suggest it was seen as controversial before the end of the fourth century, so far as I know.
The irony here is the author says every thing is vanity and vexation however here we are still pondering over his words.
Ecclesiastes can in my opinion be interpreted in two ways. And this comes from someone who spent the last 45 years of my 51 years of life praying to a God I’m now not sure exist.
Or better yet I think God exists in me as me. I still shed some tears now and then as I was looking forward to meeting Jesus but whatever.
John 8 says the truth will set you free. The freedom for me is that I now understand I’m making my own way through life and heck yes I’m going to leave my mark !
So either lay down do nothing, think your life is a vapor, here today gone tomorrow, nothing matters or be like the Nike phase. JUST DO IT !! Leave your mark, touch a life, make a difference in this world for the good of mankind.
Question, do you pray ? I do find myself on occasion praying just out of habit.
No, I don’t. But I meditate.
A joke Ricky Gervais told Jerry Seinfeld might be an example of skeptical wisdom:
A Holocaust survivor died, went to heaven, met God and told him a Holocaust joke.
God said, “That isn’t funny”.
The Holocaust survivor said, “You had to be there”.
Dr. Ehrman, do you think the conclusion of Ecclesiastes was an “improvement” added by a later editor? I didn’t notice any talk of keeping God’s commandments or of a final judgment in Ecclesiastes until the last few verses.
12:13-14 “The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person. For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil.”
Yes, I definitely think that. (It’s a common view among schoalrs)
How I love Ecclesiastes. At my conservative summer church camp, my counselor encouraged us to spend our daily personal bible reading time on parts of the Bible that we hadn’t read before. I randomly picked Ecclesiastes and oh my God, that was fantastic. I had a LOT of questions. I’m not sure how happy the counselor was with my choice. And after that I picked Song of Songs, lol. It was quite a campfor a 12 year old who up until then had been spoon fed the Bible’s greatest hits in Sunday School.
Two questions, dear Bart:
1st: Job’s god is the same as the rest of the Hebrew Bible?
I notice important differences between both gods. First, retributive justice. The God of the Hebrew Bible is the God who rewards the good and punishes the wicked; Job’s god places a wager on the fidelity of his servant above that retributive justice, which is a very important leitmotif of the OT.
It is very difficult to imagine the God of the Hebrew Bible making bets with the devil and allowing, as part of that bet, a righteous man to suffer and his innocent children to die.
2º The skepticism of Ecclesiastes, does it reflect the skeptical thought of Judaism– a subject on which good essays have been written– or of Hellenism? I suppose that to give an answer we will have to take into account the time in which that book was written, an issue on which I believe there is a lot of debate
I’d say that different authors have different views of God in teh OT — not just Ecclesiastes against the rest. The anthropomorphic God of Genesis 2-4 is not the same as the transcendant almighty “only” God of Isaiah 40-55, e.g. The skepticism is most related to Epicureanism, the Hellenistic philosophical tradition.
Thank you very much for the reply.
Regarding the God of Job, I still think that his differences with other types of gods — more or less anthropomorphic — that different authors of the OT define and explain in their texts, is too pronounced that allow us to think that this god of Job is creation from another culture (or perhaps subculture) other than the one that produced the Hebrew Bible.
The transcendental God that underlies said Bible is very contradictory to the insubstantial, frivolous, smug and trickster God that emerges from the book of Job, who jokes with the devil and even makes bets with him.
You might want to read Jack Miles’ Pulitzer Prize winning book, God: A Biography
When I was in my 20’s, I was a big fan of Albert Camus et al, and their belief in recognizing the inherent absurdity of life, yet take it on with gusto, a sense of humour and even to love life precisely for its absurdity. Come to think of it, I’m probably still a fan now.
There’s nothing we can do to change the cycle of birth, life and death, but IMO the central focus of life has to involve making the world a better place, both in the present and for the future. Very few of us get to make the world better in ways that endure for many generations (like Michelangelo or Einstein). Being a good parent and trying to raise kids to be good citizens is already a step in the right direction IMO. These are of course easy platitudes, but they’re a good place to start.
I wonder what Qoheleth would have thought of Buddhism/Zen/Mindfulness. Similar conclusions but less disappointment and sadness. And Buddhism, etc, seems to both focus more on and be more positive about the simple here and now.
It also sounds like Epicurus: enjoy life by avoiding physical pain and mental distress—unless these are necessary to avoid greater pain and distress. In short, don’t worry.
In the last week-even if it’s only temporary-the attractiveness of Aristotelian-style Teleology has reasserted itself in my mind. Not so much as an argument for the existence of God but simply the world as the actualization of natural potentialities—as in an acorn becoming an oak. For human beings this would most importantly include the exercise of reason and, ideally, the contemplative/scientific/knowledge-oriented kind of life—wisdom in Qoholeth’s scheme. Even if such a life ended in death it could still have purpose and progress.
Finally, if one could temper one’s ego enough, maybe death wouldn’t need to make life seem so pointless. If one could identify strongly enough with things outside of and bigger than oneself, one could take a lot of satisfaction in progress and increased goodness and not be bothered very much by one’s own death.
It is usually tied to Epicurus — there are clear Hellenistic features of the book.
During my investigation into understanding the four Gospels, I did find myself getting into the wisdom books. However, I noticed, the King James or many other translations leave out the two last ones, Wisdom and Ben Sira, previously known as the book of Sirach or by the Latin Vulgate as Ecclesiasticus, the last one being of a much higher level than Proverbs, where he actually instructs almost to perfection. I found the book of Ecclesiastes more of a book of questions than structural training. I also learned, that though the Jewish Torah may not include these two, they are still highly regarded as exquisite pieces of literature. I personally would have preferred the King James and the others left these two in and dropped Ecclesiastes. I discovered Jesus’ teachings and wisdom level to be higher than all of these. Secondly, I found the book of Job, not as a book of wisdom, but rather, a piece of writing aimed at strengthening one’s personal incentive on undeniable faith, or rather what I call human conditioning. I’m not against it, it just does not strike me as a writing of wisdom. Do you disagree with my perception?
THe King James did not leave out Wisdom and Ben Sira; they are not part of the Protestant canon of Scripture (they are in the Apocrypha, not the Hebrew Bible). The “books of Wisdom” (that’s a technical designation) in the Hebrew Bible are Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes.
These two and others used to be in the King James until the Puritans got after them in the late 16th century, for noticing these extra books in the Roman Catholic printings, were not in the Torah. Several of these were recognized as works of worth by the early church, therefore, their Old Testament is not going to be an exact duplicate to the older Jewish Cannon, nor should they be, if we are trying to follow our Savior, who is of a higher standing then our previous leaders of faith. Though they may still be recognized in the Apocrypha, as long as a Protestant does not see them in their Bible, then they are not even considered. I find that unfortunate. But, that’s me.