Ecclesiastes
The title commonly used in English is a Latin transliteration of the Greek translation of the Hebrew word קֹהֶלֶת (Kohelet, Koheleth, Qoheleth or Qohelet).
[4] Ecclesiastes is a phonetic transliteration of the Greek word Ἐκκλησιαστής (Ekklēsiastēs), which in the Septuagint translates the Hebrew name of its stated author, Kohelet (קֹהֶלֶת).
According to the majority understanding today,[8] the word is a more general (mishkal, מִשְׁקָל) form rather than a literal participle, and the intended meaning of Kohelet in the text is "someone speaking before an assembly," hence "Teacher" or "Preacher."
According to Isaiah di Trani, "He authored this work in his old age, when he was weak like a woman, and therefore he received a feminine name," an opinion likewise held by Johann Simonis.
"[18] Verse 1:1 is a superscription, the ancient equivalent of a title page: it introduces the book as "the words of Kohelet, son of David, king in Jerusalem.
"[24] Some scholars suggest 12:13–14 were an addition by a more orthodox author than the original writer[25][26] (that the epilogue was added later was first proposed by Samuel ibn Tibbon);[22] others[who?]
[27] The book takes its name from the Greek ekklēsiastēs, a translation of the title by which the central figure refers to himself: "Kohelet", meaning something like "one who convenes or addresses an assembly".
[35] It has been argued, however, that the question has no theological importance;[35] one scholar (Roland Murphy) has commented that Kohelet himself would have regarded the time and ingenuity put into interpreting his book as "one more example of the futility of human effort".
Wisdom was a popular genre in the ancient world, where it was cultivated in scribal circles and directed towards young men who would take up careers in high officialdom and royal courts; there is strong evidence that some of these books, or at least sayings and teachings, were translated into Hebrew and influenced the Book of Proverbs, and the author of Ecclesiastes was probably familiar with examples from Egypt and Mesopotamia.
[39] The presence of Ecclesiastes in the Bible is something of a puzzle, as the common themes of the Hebrew canon—a God who reveals and redeems, who elects and cares for a chosen people—are absent from it, which suggests that Kohelet had lost his faith in his old age.
[40] Another was that the words of the epilogue, in which the reader is told to fear God and keep his commands, made it orthodox; but all later attempts to find anything in the rest of the book that would reflect this orthodoxy have failed.
[41] Scholars disagree about the themes of Ecclesiastes: whether it is positive and life-affirming, or deeply pessimistic;[42] whether it is coherent or incoherent, insightful or confused, orthodox or heterodox; whether the ultimate message of the book is to copy Kohelet, "the wise man," or to avoid his errors.
[43] At times, Kohelet raises deep questions; he "doubted every aspect of religion, from the very ideal of righteousness, to the by now traditional idea of divine justice for individuals".
On this reading, Kohelet's sayings are goads, designed to provoke dialogue and reflection in his readers, rather than to reach premature and self-assured conclusions.
The phrase "under the sun" appears twenty-nine times in connection with these observations; all this coexists with a firm belief in God, whose power, justice and unpredictability are sovereign.
[39] In Judaism, Ecclesiastes is read either on Shemini Atzeret (by Yemenites, Italians, some Sephardim, and the mediaeval French Jewish rite) or on the Shabbat of the intermediate days of Sukkot (by Ashkenazim).
The final poem of Kohelet[48] has been interpreted in the Targum, Talmud and Midrash, and by the rabbis Rashi, Rashbam and ibn Ezra, as an allegory of old age.
[51] The 20th-century Catholic theologian and cardinal-elect Hans Urs von Balthasar discussed Ecclesiastes in his work on theological aesthetics, The Glory of the Lord.
He describes Qoheleth as "a critical transcendentalist avant la lettre", whose God is distant from the world, and whose kairos is a "form of time which is itself empty of meaning".
Pope John Paul II, in his general audience of October 20, 2004, called the author of Ecclesiastes "an ancient biblical sage" whose description of death "makes frantic clinging to earthly things completely pointless".
[55] American novelist Thomas Wolfe wrote: "[O]f all I have ever seen or learned, that book seems to me the noblest, the wisest, and the most powerful expression of man's life upon this earth—and also the highest flower of poetry, eloquence, and truth.
I am not given to dogmatic judgments in the matter of literary creation, but if I had to make one I could say that Ecclesiastes is the greatest single piece of writing I have ever known, and the wisdom expressed in it the most lasting and profound.
