Chapter VI Koheleth’s ‘Portrait of Old Age;’ the Epilogue, Its Nature and Origin
We have now arrived at the conclusion of the meditations of our much-tried thinker. It is strongly poetic in colouring; but when we compare it with the grandly simple overture of the book (i. 4-8), can we help confessing to a certain degree of disappointment? It is the allegory which spoils it for modern readers, and so completely spoils it, that attempts have been sometimes made to expel the allegorical element altogether. That the first two verses are free from allegory, is admitted, and it is barely possible that the sixth verse may be so too—may be, that is, figurative rather than allegorical. Poets have delighted in these figures; how fitly does one of them adorn the lament in Woolner’s My Beautiful Lady,—
Broken the golden bowl
Which held her hallowed soul!
The most doubtful part, then, is the description in vv. 3-5. I am not writing a commentary, and will venture to express an opinion in favour of the allegorists (it is not fair to call them satirically the anatomists).326 It is true that there is much variety of opinion among them; this only shows that the allegory is sometimes far-fetched, not that it is a vain imagination. Can there be anything more obscure than the canzoni in Dante’s Convito, which we have the poet’s own authority for regarding as allegorical? And if we compare the rival theories with that which they attempt to displace, can it be said that Taylor’s dirge-theory,327 or Umbreit’s storm-theory,328 or that adopted by Wright from Wetzstein329 is more suitable to the poem than the allegorical theory? Certainly the latter is a very old, if not the oldest theory, and on a point of this sort the ancients have some claim to be deferred to. They seem to have felt instinctively that the intellectual atmosphere of Koheleth (as well as of the Chronicler) was that of the later Judaism. The following story is related in a Talmudic treatise.330 ‘The Emperor asked R. Joshua ben Hananyah, “How is it that you do not go to the house of Abidan (a place of learned discussions)?” He said to him, “The mountain is snow (my head is white); the hoar frosts surround me (my whiskers and my beard are also hoary); its dogs do not bark (I have lost my wonted power of voice); its millers do not grind (I have no teeth); the scholars ask me whether I am looking for something I have not lost (referring probably to the old man feeling here and there).”’
Once more (see i. 2) the mournful motto, ‘Vanity of vanities! saith the Koheleth; all is vanity’ (xii. 8), and the book in its original form closes.331 Did the author himself attach this motto? Surely not, if the preceding words on the return of the spirit to its God (see above, on iii. 21) are genuine, for then ‘Vanity of vanities’ would be a patent misrepresentation. All is not ‘vanity,’ if there is in human nature a point connecting a man with that world, most distant and yet most near, where in the highest sense God is. If Koheleth wrote xii. 7b, he cannot have written xii. 8, any more than the author of the Imitation could have written Vanitas vanitatum both on his first page and on his last. Yet who but Koheleth can be responsible for it? For the later editors of whom I have spoken, would be far from approving such a reversal of the great charter of man’s dignity in the eighth Psalm. To me, the motto simply says that all Koheleth’s wanderings had but brought him back to the point from which he started. ‘Grandissima vanità,’ as Castelli, in his dignified Italian, puts it, ‘tutto è vanità.’ All that I can assign to the editors in this verse are the parenthetic words ‘saith the Koheleth.’ Everywhere else we find ‘Koheleth;’ here alone, and perhaps vii. 17 (corrected text), ‘the Koheleth.’332
Let us now consider the Epilogue itself.
And moreover (it should be said) that Koheleth was a wise man; further, he taught the people wisdom, and weighed and made search, (yea) composed many proverbs. Koheleth sought to find out pleasant words, and he wrote down333 plainly words of truth. The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails well driven in; the members of the assemblies334 have [in the case of Ecclesiastes] given them forth from another shepherd.335 And as for all beyond them, my son, be warned; of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.—That which the word ‘all is vanity’ comes to:336 it is understood (thus), Fear God, and keep His commandments. For this (concerns) every man. For every work shall God bring into the judgment (which shall be) upon all that is concealed and all that is manifest, whether it be good or whether it be evil.
This translation has not been reached without some emendations of the text. It seems to me that everything in this Epilogue ought to be clear. There is but one verse which contains figurative expressions; the rest is simple prose. It is only fair, however, to give one of the current renderings of those verses in which an emendation has been attempted above.
Koheleth sought to find out pleasant words and that which was written down frankly, words of truth. Words of wise men are like goads, and like nails driven in are those which form collections [or, the well-compacted sayings, Ewald; or, the well-stored ones, Kamphausen]—they have been given by one shepherd.... Final result, all having been heard:—Fear God and keep His commandments, for this (concerns) every man.337
The first scholar to declare against the genuineness of the Epilogue was Döderlein (Scholia in libros V. T. poeticos, 1779), who was followed by Bertholdt (Einleitung, p. 2250 &c.), Umbreit, Knobel, and De Jong.338 It was however a Jewish scholar, Nachman Krochmal,339 who first developed an elaborate theory to account for the Epilogue. According to him, it was added at the final settlement of the Canon at the Synod of Jamnia, A.D. 90, and was intended as a conclusion not merely for Ecclesiastes, but for the entire body of Hagiographa. He thinks (but without any historical ground) that Ecclesiastes was added at that time to close the Canon. The correctness of this view depends partly on its author’s interpretation of vv. 11, 12, partly on his definition of the object of the Synod of Jamnia (see Appendix.) The two former verses are condensed thus,
The words of the wise are like ox-goads, and the members of the Sanhedrin are like firm nails, not to be moved. As for more than these, beware, my son; of making many books there is no end.
The ‘wise’ spoken of, thinks Krochmal, are the authors of the several books of the Hagiographa, and the warning in ver. 12 is directed against the reception of any other books into the Canon. Whether the Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes were to be admitted, was, according to him, a subject of debate at the Synod referred to.
But there is no necessity whatever for this interpretation of vv. 11, 12. The phrase, ‘the words of the wise,’ is not a fit description of all the books of the Hagiographa (of Psalms, Daniel, and Chronicles for instance), and the warning in ver. 12 more probably has relation to the proverbial literature in general, such as Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Wisdom of Sirach, or at least to the Book of Proverbs, to which Kleinert conjectures that Ecclesiastes once formed an appendix. There is nothing in the Epilogue to suggest a reference to the Canon. The ‘many books’ spoken of are probably such as did not proceed from thoroughly orthodox sources. We have absolutely no information as to Jewish literature outside the Canon. That there was a heterodox literature, has been inferred by Ewald from Jer. viii. 8, Prov. xxx. 1-4; it is also clear from several passages in the Book of Enoch. Tyler and Plumptre may possibly be right in seeing here an allusion to the incipient influence of Greek literature upon the Jews. This is at any rate more justifiable than to assume an arrangement of the Hagiographa with Ecclesiastes for the closing book for which there is no ancient testimony.
Krochmal’s ingenious theory has, however, been adopted by Jost, Grätz and Renan,340 though Renan is willing to admit that vv. 9, 10 may be from the pen of the author himself. ‘Cet épilogue complète bien la fiction qui fait la base du livre. Quel motif d’ailleurs eût amené à faire postérieurement une telle addition?’341 I do not myself hold with Krochmal, but vv. 9-12 seem to me to hang together, and I do not think that the author himself would be at the pains to destroy his own fiction, whereas a later editor would naturally append the corrective statement that the real Koheleth was not a king, but a wise man. (Observe too that ‘Koheleth’ in ver. 8 has the article, but in vv. 9, 10 is without it, suggesting a change of writer.) I agree however with Renan that vv. 13, 14, which differ in tone and in form from the preceding verses, appear to be a later addition than the rest of the Epilogue. Renan, it is true, distrusts this appearance; he fears a too complicated hypothesis. But we must at least hold that vv. 13, 14 were added (whether by the Epilogist or by another) by an after-thought. The Epilogue should therefore be divided into two parts, vv. 9-12, and vv. 13, 14. In the first part, the real is distinguished from the fictitious author; his qualifications are described; the editors of his posthumous work are indicated; and a warning is given to the disciple of the Epilogist (to apply the words of M. Aurelius) ‘to cast away the thirst for books.’342 In the second part, a contradiction is given to what seemed an unworthy interpretation of a characteristic expression of Koheleth’s, and the higher view of its meaning is justified—justified, that is, to those who approach the work from the practical point of view of those who have as yet no better moral ‘Enchiridion.’343
At what period was the Epilogue added? The consideration of its style may help us at least to a negative result. The Hebrew approaches that of the Mishna, but is yet sufficiently distinct from it to be the subject of expository paraphrase in the Talmuds.344 It is therefore improbable that it was added long after the period of the author himself. Books like Sirach and Koheleth soon became popular, and attracted the attention of the religious authorities. Interpolation or insertion seemed the only way to counteract the spiritual danger to unsuspicious readers.