Sheffield Old Testament Guides: Ecclesiastes
Overview
Dr. Whybray describes the ancient Near-Eastern tradition of producing collections of wisdom: instructions in the form of aphorisms and proverbs for educating the young on how to have a happy and successful life. Although Proverbs depends on the tradition of wisdom literature, according to Whybray, the book of Ecclesiastes modifies this tradition. The book contains three very different types of material: sections whose form and character are hardly distinguishable from the instructions of Egypt and Mesopotamia; others where the aim remains the achievement of the successful life; and finally, passages in which the main purpose has now become the pursuit of a wisdom which is in entire conformation with the “fear of the Lord.”
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Top Highlights
“In fact, in terms of the history of the Hebrew language, Ecclesiastes bears all the marks of having been written in a transitional period between ‘classical’ biblical Hebrew and the post-biblical literature of the Mishnah (c. 200 ad, but containing earlier material).” (Page 17)
“Here we find a man detached from the world and yet intensely aware of it, setting down in writing his thoughts about human life ‘under the sun’ and giving his considered advice about the way in which it can best be lived. Yet from the very first his readers have been unable to agree about his basic attitude to life. St Jerome, on the one hand, spoke for many Jewish and Christian interpreters in seeing his book as a call to embrace the ascetic life in order to escape the vanities of this world. On the other hand, Jerome also tells us, ‘the Hebrews say that … this book ought to be obliterated, because it asserts that all the creatures of God are vain, and regards the whole as nothing, and prefers eating and drinking and transient pleasures before all things’.” (Pages 11–12)
“But there is also a sense in which Ecclesiastes can be called ‘modern’. That is, it is concerned with a set of universal questions which are recognizably the same as those which still puzzle modern men and women, and which are here treated in a way somewhat similar to modern theological and philosophical discourse. They are questions which no thinking person can ultimately escape: questions about such matters as the purpose, if any, of human existence and whether the universe is governed by moral laws—questions to which, more than two thousand years later, and despite the efforts of many generations of philosophers and theologians, no answers have yet been found—and indeed it is doubtful whether one can even say that progress has been made.” (Page 12)
- Title: Sheffield Old Testament Guides: Ecclesiastes
- Author: R. Norman Whybray
- Publisher: Sheffield Academic Press
- Publication Date: 1997
- Pages: 85
