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biblical literature
Encyclopædia Britannica Article
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Old Testament literature > The Ketuvim > The Megillot (the Scrolls) > Ecclesiastes
The book of Ecclesiastes is a work of the Hebrew wisdom movement, associated by its title and by tradition with King Solomon. It is evident, however, that the book is of much later composition; the author may have identified himself with the famous king and wise man of the past to give greater authority to his work. The language of the book, including the relatively large number of Aramaic forms, and its content point to a date in the early Greek period (later 4th or early 3rd century BCE). That the book was written prior to the 2nd century BCE, however, is shown by its influence on Ecclesiasticus, which was written early in that century, and its appearance among the manuscripts discovered at Khirbat Qumran, on the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, where a Jewish community existed in the mid-2nd century.
The name Ecclesiastes is a transliteration of the Greek word used in the Septuagint to translate the Hebrew Qohelet, a word connected with the noun qahal (assembly). Qohelet seems to mean the one who gathers or teaches an assembly; the author used the word as a pseudonym. He appears to be a wisdom teacher writing late in life expressing skeptical personal reflections in a collection of popular maxims of the day and longer compositions of his own. The book has been described as a sage's notebook of random observations about life. Some interpreters have questioned the unity of authorship, but, given the notebook character of the work, there seems to be little need for questioning its basic integrity.
Although the phrase vanity of vanities! all is vanity stressed at both the beginning and the end of the book sums up its theme, it does not convey the variety of tests that the skeptical Qohelet applies to life. He examines everythingmaterial things, wisdom, toil, wealthand finds them unable to give meaning to life. He repeatedly returns to life's uncertainties, to the hidden and incomprehensible ways of God, and to the stark and final fact of death. The only conclusion to this human condition is to accept gratefully the small day-to-day pleasures that God gives to man.
Qohelet stands in sharp contrast to the conventional wisdom schools. He recognizes the relative value of wisdom as against foolishness, but he rejects the oversimplified and optimistic view of wisdom as security for life. He offers a religious skepticism that rejects all facile answers to life's mysteries and God's ways.
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