Chapter VII Ecclesiastes and Its Critics (From a Philological Point of View)
By comparison with Ecclesiastes, the books which we have hitherto been studying may be called easy; at any rate, they have not given rise to equally strange diversities of critical opinion. A chapter with the above heading seems therefore at this point specially necessary. Dr. Ginsburg’s masterly sketch of the principal theories of the critics down to 1860 dispenses me, it is true, from attempting an exhaustive survey.345 It is not the duty of every teacher of Old Testament criticism to traverse the history of his subject afresh, any more than it is that of the commentator as such to begin with a catena of the opinions of previous writers. Suffice it to call attention to two of the Jewish and two of the Christian expositors mentioned by Dr. Ginsburg, viz. Mendelssohn and Luzzatto, and Ewald and Vaihinger. Mendelssohn seems important not so much by his results as by his historical position. His life marks an era in Biblical study, most of all of course among the Jews, but to some extent among Christians also. His Hebrew commentary on Koheleth deserves specially to be remembered, because with it in 1770 he broke ground anew in grammatical exegesis. To him, as also to Vaihinger, the object of Koheleth is to propound the great consolatory truth of the immortality of the soul, while Ewald, more in accordance with facts, describes it as being rather to combine all that is true, however sad, and profitable, and agreeable to the will of God in a practical handbook adapted to those troublesome times. Ewald and Vaihinger both divide the book into four sections,—(1) i. 2-ii. 26, (2) iii. 1-vi. 9, (3) vi. 10-viii. 15, (4) viii. 16-xii. 8, with the Epilogue xii. 9-14. The latter, whose view is more developed than Ewald’s, and whom I refer to as closing and summing up a period, maintains that each section consists of three parts which are again subdivided—for Koheleth, though you would not think it, is a literary artist—into strophes and half-strophes, and that the theme of each section is thrown out, seemingly by chance, but really with consummate art, in the preceding one. Thus the four sections interlace, and the unity of the book is established. The Epilogue, too, according to Vaihinger, can thus be proved to be the work of the author of Koheleth; for it does but ratify and develope what has already been indicated in xi. 9, and without it the connection of ideas would be incomplete.346 I think that our experience of some interpreters of the Book of Job may predispose us to be sceptical of such ingenious subtleties, and I notice that more recent critics show a tendency to insist less on the logical distribution of the contents and to regard the book, not indeed as a mere collection of rules of conduct, but at any rate as a record of a practical and not a scholastic philosopher. This tendency is not indeed of recent origin, though it has increased in favour of late years. Prior the poet had already said that Ecclesiastes ‘is not a regular and perfect treatise, but that in it great treasures are “heaped up together in a confused magnificence;”’347 Bishop Lowth, that ‘the connection of the arguments is involved in much obscurity;’348 while Herder, in his letters to a theological student, had penned this wise though too enthusiastic sentence, which cuts at the root of all attempts at logical analysis,
Kein Buch ist mir aus dem Alterthum bekannt, welches die Summe des menschlichen Lebens, seine Abwechselungen und Nichtigkeiten in Geschäften, Entwürfen, Speculationen und Vergnügen, zugleich mit dem was einzig in ihm wahr, daurend, fortgehend, wechselnd, lohnend ist, reicher, eindringlicher, kürzer beschriebe, als dieses.349
But I must retrace my steps. One of my four critics has yet to be briefly characterised—S. D. Luzzatto of Padua, best known as the author of a Hebrew commentary on Isaiah, but also a master in later Hebrew and Aramaic scholarship. As a youth of twenty-four he wrote a deeply felt and somewhat eccentrically ingenious treatise on Koheleth, which he kept by him till 1860, when it appeared in one of the annual volumes of essays and reviews called Ozar Nechmad. In it he maintains, with profound indignation at the unworthy post-Exile writer, that the Book of Ecclesiastes denies the immortality of the soul, and recommends a life of sensuous pleasure. The writer’s name, however, was, he thinks, Koheleth, and his fraud in assuming the name of Solomon was detected by the wise men of his time, who struck out the assumed name and substituted Koheleth (leaving however the words ‘son of David, king in Jerusalem,’ as a record of the imposture). Later students, however, were unsuspicious enough to accept the work as Solomon’s, and being unable to exclude a Solomonic writing from the Canon, they inserted three qualifying half-verses of an orthodox character, viz. ‘and know that for all this God will bring thee into judgment’ (xi. 6b); ‘and remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth’ (xii. 1a); ‘and the spirit shall return to God who gave it’ (xii. 8b). This latter view, which has the doubtful support of a Talmudic passage,350 appears to me, though from the nature of the case uncertain, and susceptible, as I think, of modification, yet in itself probable as restoring harmony to the book, and in accordance with the treatment of other Biblical texts by the Soferim (or students and editors of Scripture). Geiger may have fallen into infinite extravagances, but he has at any rate shown that the early Soferim modified many passages in the interests of orthodoxy and edification.351 If so, they did but carry on the process already begun by the authors of the sacred books themselves; it may be enough to remind my readers of the gradual supplementing of the original Book of Job by later writers. To the three passages of Koheleth mentioned above, must be added, as Geiger saw,352 the two postscripts which form the Epilogue. From the close of the last century a series of writers have felt the difficulties of this section so strongly that they have assigned it to one or more later writers, and in truth, although these difficulties may be partly removed, enough remains to justify the obelising of the passage.
There is no evidence that Luzzatto ever retracted the critical view mentioned above. To the character of the author, it is true, he became more charitable in his later years. I do not think the worse of him for his original antipathy. An earnest believer himself and of fiery temperament, he could not understand the cool and cautious reflective spirit of the much-tried philosopher;353 and as a lover of the rich, and, as the result of development, comparatively flexible Hebrew tongue, he took a dislike to a writer so wanting in facility and grace as Koheleth.354 It was an error, but a noble one, and it shows that Luzzatto found in the study of criticism a school of moral culture as well as of literary insight.
The adoption of Luzzatto’s view,355 combined with Döderlein’s as to the epilogue, removes the temptation to interpret Koheleth as the apology of any particular philosophical or theological doctrine. The author now appears, not indeed thoroughly consistent, but at least in his true light as a thinker tossed about on the sea of speculation, and without any fixed theoretic conclusions. Without agreeing to more than the relative lateness of the epilogue, De Jong,356 a Dutch scholar, recognises the true position of Koheleth, and in the psychological interest of the book sees a full compensation for the want of logical arrangement. De Jong indeed was not acquainted with the theory of Nachman Krochmal, which if sound throws such great light on the reason of the addition of the epilogue (see end of Chap. VI.) This has been accepted by Grätz and Renan, but, as I have ventured to think, upon insufficient grounds. The brevity of my reference to these two eminent exegetes must be excused by my inability to follow either of them in his main conclusions. The glossary of peculiar words and the excursus on the Greek translation given by the former (1871) possess a permanent value, and there is much of historical interest in his introduction. But I agree with Kuenen that the student who selects Grätz as his guide will have much to unlearn afterwards.357 In order to show that Ecclesiastes is a politico-religious satire levelled against king Herod, with the special object of correcting certain evil tendencies among the Jews of that age, Grätz is compelled to have recourse to much perverse exegesis which I have no inclination to criticise.358 Renan’s present view differs widely from that given in his great unfinished history of the Semitic languages. But I shall have occasion to refer to his determination of the date of our book later.
Among recent English students, no one will refuse the palm of acuteness and originality to Tyler (1874). His strength lies not in translation and exegesis, but in the consistency with which he has applied his single key, viz. the comparison of the book with Stoic and Epicurean teaching. He is fully aware that the book has no logical divisions. Antithesis and contradiction is the fundamental characteristic of the book. Not that the author contradicts himself (comp. the quotation from Ibn Ezra in Ginsburg’s Coheleth, p. 57), but that a faithful index of the contradictions of the two great philosophical schools gives a greater point to his concluding warning against philosophy. It is the ‘sacrificio dell’ intelletto’ which the author counsels. But Mr. Tyler’s theory or at least his point of view demands a separate consideration. It may however be fairly said here that by general consent Mr. Tyler has done something to make the influence of Greek philosophical ideas upon Ecclesiastes a more plausible opinion.
To a subsequent chapter I must also beg to refer the reader for a notice of Gustav Bickell’s hypothesis (1884) relative to the fortunes (or misfortunes) of the text of Koheleth. This critic is not one of those who grant that the book had from the first no logical division, and his hypothesis is one of the boldest and most plausible in the history of criticism. Its boldness is in itself no defect, but I confess I desiderate that caution which is the second indispensable requisite in a great critic. The due admixture of these two qualities nature has not yet granted. Meantime the greatest successes are perhaps attained by those who are least self-confident, least ambitious of personal distinction. Upon the whole, from the point of view of the student proper, are there more thankworthy contributions to criticism not less than to exegesis than the books of Plumptre (1881), Nowack (1883), and above all the accomplished altmeister Franz Delitzsch (1875)? Whatever has been said before profitably and well, may be known by him who will consult these three accomplished though not faultless expositors. I would not be supposed to detract from other writers,359 but I believe that the young student will not repent limiting himself, not indeed to one, but to three commentaries.