Compare with this the words, so Greek in tone, of xi. 7, as well as the constantly recurring formula ‘under the sun’ (e.g. i. 3, iv. 3). We can see that even Koheleth was affected by nature, but without any lightening of his load of trial. The wide-open eye of day seemed to mock him by its unfeeling serenity. He lacked that susceptibility for the whispered lessons of nature which the poet of Job so pre-eminently possessed; he lacked too the great modern conception of progress, embodied in that fine passage from Carlyle. He was prosaic and unimaginative, and it is partly because there is so little poetry in Ecclesiastes that there is so little Christianity. But I am already passing to another order of considerations, without which indeed we cannot estimate this singular autobiography aright. We have next to consider Koheleth from a directly religious and moral point of view.
We have seen how large a Christian element penetrates and glorifies the bold questionings of the Book of Job. Whatever be our view on obscure problems of criticism, the character-drama which the book in its present form presents is one which it almost requires a Christian to appreciate adequately. It is different with the Book of Ecclesiastes. ‘He who will allow that book to speak for itself, and does not read other meanings into almost every verse, must feel at every step that he is breathing a different atmosphere from that of the teaching of the Gospels.’[374] Still more is this the case if we claim the right of free criticism, and deny that the hints of a growing tendency to believe are due to the morbidly sceptical author of the book (if it may be called a book). Certainly the religious use of Koheleth is more directly affected by modern criticism and exegesis than that of any other Old Testament writing. The early theologians could dispense with criticism, because they so frequently allegorised or unconsciously gave a gentle twist to the literal meaning. But we, if for a religious purpose we use the book uncritically, must be well aware that we often misrepresent both the author of Koheleth himself and Christian faith. Let me only mention three texts in the use of which this misrepresentation very commonly takes place. The fixity of the spiritual state in which a man is at death may or may not be an essential Christian doctrine, but we have no right to quote either Koheleth’s despairing description of the inert life of the shades (ix. 10), or the proverbial saying on the unalterableness of the laws of nature (xi. 3), in support of this; nor is it well to adopt a phrase (descriptive of Sheól) from xii. 5, which favours the false idea expressed in the too common ‘Here lieth’ of the churchyard. Anticipations of really fundamental Christian doctrines are, I admit, rarely sought for in Ecclesiastes. It is well that this should be so. How completely the evangelical elements in Jewish religion had been obscured later on in this period, we have seen from the Wisdom of Sirach. It seemed in fact as if the only alternatives then for a thoughtful Jew were a more or less strict legal orthodoxy and a resigned acquiescence in things as they were, brightened only by gleams, eagerly hailed, of intellectual or sensuous pleasure. Sirach chose the former of these, Koheleth the latter. Koheleth’s was not in itself the better choice. But the worse alternative needed perhaps to be stated as forcibly as possible, that men might see the rock and avoid shipwreck. Ecclesiastes, like the first part of Goethe’s Faust, may, with the fullest justice, be called an apology for Christianity, not as containing anticipations of Christian truth—the error of Hengstenberg;[375] but inasmuch as it shows that neither wisdom, nor any other human good or human pleasure, brings permanent satisfaction to man’s natural longings. It is at any rate a contribution towards the negative criticism with which such an apology must begin, just as the Book of Job is a contribution, or a series of contributions, towards a more perfect and evangelical theodicy.
There is at least one point, then, which the moral and religious critic of Ecclesiastes can adopt out of all the strangely distorted views of patristic writers, so ably summed up by Dr. Ginsburg in his Introduction, viz. that the gloomy sentence, Vanitas vanitatum, is perfectly accurate when applied to the life of Koheleth, but only to a life like his. Thomas à Kempis could prelude with two verses from Koheleth (i. 2, 8), but he could only prelude. A life of true service—one whose centre is outside self or family or even nation—is not vanity nor vexation of spirit: Koheleth might have added this as the burden of a second part of his book. But did he not actually append it as his epilogue? Did he not ‘faintly trust’ the hope of immortality (xii. 7)? Did he not work his way back to a living faith, like ‘Asaph’ in Ps. lxxiii.? There is no question that the book was admitted into the Canon on the assumption that he did. As a great Jewish preacher says, the book [in its present form] opens with Nothingness, but closes with the fear of God.[376] It is parallel in this respect to many Jewish lives, like that of Heine, which may be described as the prodigal son’s quest of his long-lost father. Accepting this view, we may join with another Jewish writer in his admiration of the influences of Jewish theism, which were then at least so strong that a consistent Jewish sceptic was an impossibility. ‘It is this,’ he remarks, ‘that gives the peculiar charm to this little book.’[377] It is impossible to give a conclusive refutation of this view, which I should like to believe true, but which seems to me to labour under exegetical difficulties. To me, Koheleth is not a theist in any vital sense in his philosophic meditations, and his so-called ‘last word’ seems forced upon him by later scribes, just as Sirach’s orthodoxy was at any rate heightened in colour by subsequent editors. To me, Derenbourg’s view is a dream, though an edifying one. It may be that the author did return to the simple faith of his childhood. He certainly never lost his theism, though pale and cheerless it was indeed, and utterly unable to stand against the assaults of doubt and despondency. It may be that history, neglected history, taught him at last to believe in the divine guidance of the fortunes of Israel. I would fain imagine this retracing of the weary pilgrim’s steps; but other and less pleasing dreams to a Christian are equally possible and I do not venture to accept the return of the prodigal as a well-authenticated fact.
We must remember too that the troubled wanderer had not really so many steps to retrace. Much that both Christians and Jews now regard as essential to faith was not, in the time of Koheleth, commonly so regarded. I am well aware of the great intuitions of some of the psalmists at certain sublime moments, and admit that they seem to us to lead naturally on to our own orthodoxy. But these intuitions could not and did not possess the force of dogmas. The great doctrines of the Resurrection and of Immortality had long to wait for a moderate degree of acceptance (they were not held, for instance, by Sirach), and longer still before they coalesced in a new and greater doctrine of the future life. Koheleth’s dissatisfaction with the doctrine of present retribution (the central point both of his heterodoxy and of Job’s) might have helped him to accept the former of these. His acquaintance with non-Jewish philosophical literature, if we may venture to assume this as a fact, might have led him, as it led the author of the Wisdom of Solomon, to embrace the hope of immortality. But though there probably is an allusion to this hope as well-founded in xii. 7b, we have seen reason to doubt whether the words came from Koheleth himself; at any rate, they are isolated, and many do not admit the allusion. Either of these doctrines would have saved Koheleth from despondency had he accepted it. From our present point of view, we must blame him for not accepting one refuge or the other, or even that simpler belief in the imperishableness of the Jewish race which Sirach had, and which has preserved so many Israelitish hearts in trials as severe as Koheleth’s. There must have been a strange weakness in his moral fibre; how else can we account either for his want of Jewish feeling or, I would now add, using the word in its looser sense, for his pessimism? As Huber has well observed,[378] none of the ancient peoples was naturally less inclined to pessimism than the Jews, so that a work like Ecclesiastes is a portent in the Old Testament, and alien to the spirit of true Judaism. I cannot wonder that both Jews and Christians have now and again been repelled by this strange book[379] and denied its title to canonicity, partly for its pessimism, partly for its supposed Epicureanism, or that the author of the Book of Wisdom before them should have given Koheleth the most scathing of condemnations by putting almost its very language into the mouth of the ungodly.[380] The true student may no doubt be equally severe upon Koheleth for his despair of wisdom and depreciation of its delights (i. 17, 18, ii. 15, 16), which are hardly redeemed by the utilitarian sayings in vii. 11, 12.
I cannot justify Koheleth, but I can plead for a mitigation of these censures, and altogether defend the admission of the Book (not, of course, as Solomonic) into the sacred Canon. Whether Jewish or not, the pessimistic theory of life has a sound kernel. ‘Our sadness,’ as Thoreau says, ‘is not sad, but our cheap joys. Let us be sad about all we see and are, for so we demand and pray for better. It is the constant prayer [of the good] and whole Christian religion.’[381] This too is the burden of E. von Hartmann’s criticism of a crudely optimistic Christianity; and need we reject the truth for the extravagances of the teacher? Next, as to the preference of sensuous enjoyment to philosophic pursuits in Koheleth. I would not seek to weaken passages like ii. 24, viii. 15, by putting them down to the irony of a sæva indignatio. But as for the depreciation of intellectual pleasure, may it not be excused by the author’s want of a sure prospect of the ‘age to come’ such as we find in those lines of Davenant,[382]
And as to the commendations of sensuous pleasure, have they not a relative justification?[383] The legalism of the ‘righteous overmuch’ threatened already perhaps to make life an intolerable burden. And though Koheleth erred in the form of his teaching, yet he did well to teach the ‘duty of delight’ (Ruskin) and to oppose an orthodoxy which sought, not merely to transform, but to kill nature. It is to his credit that he touches on the relations of the sexes with such studious reserve.[384] As a rule, the enjoyments which he recommends are those of the table, which in Sirach’s time (Ecclus. xxxii. 3-5) and perhaps also in Koheleth’s included music and singing,—in short, festive but refined society. His praise of festive mirth is at any rate more excusable morally than Omar Khayyâm’s impassioned commendations of the wine-cup.[385] As Jeremy Taylor says, ‘It was the best thing that was then commonly known that they should seize upon the present with a temperate use of permitted pleasures.’[386] Lastly, the admission of the book into the Canon is (perhaps we may say) not less providential than that of the Song of Songs. The latter shows us human nature in simple and healthy relations of life; the former, a human nature in a morbid state and in depressed and artificial circumstances. How to return at least to inward simplicity and health, the latter part (not the Epilogue) of the Book of Job beautifully shows us.
Our great idealist poet Shelley, who so admired Job, disliked Ecclesiastes for the same reason as the ancient heretics already mentioned. One greater than he, our ‘sage and serious’ Milton, justifies the sacred Scripture for the variety of its contents on the same ground that he advocates ‘unlicensed printing.’ Both are ‘for the trial of virtue and the exercise of truth.’ We need not, then, he says, be surprised if the Bible ‘brings in holiest men passionately murmuring against Providence through all the arguments of Epicurus.’[387] The Bible, according to Milton, is perfect not in spite but because of its variety; it is like the rugged ‘mountains of God,’ not like the symmetrical works of human art. But Milton has also reminded us that a fool may misuse even sacred Scripture.
Jewish tradition, while admitting a Hezekian or post-Hezekian redaction of the book, assigns the original authorship of Ecclesiastes to Solomon. The Song of Songs it regards as the monument of this king’s early manhood, the Book of Proverbs of his middle age, and the semi-philosophical meditations before us as the work of his old age. The tradition was connected by the Aggada with the favourite legend[388] of the discrowned Solomon, but is based upon the book itself, the passages due to the literary fiction of Solomon’s authorship (which Bickell indeed attributes to an interpolator) having been misunderstood. Would that the author of the Lectures on the Jewish Church had given the weight of his name to the true explanation of these passages! The reticence of the lines devoted in the second volume of the Lectures to Ecclesiastes has led some critics to imagine that according to Dean Stanley, this book, like much of Proverbs, might possibly be the work of the ‘wisest’ of Israel’s kings. Little had the author profited by Ewald if he really allowed such an absolute legend the smallest standing-ground among reasonable hypotheses! Whichever way we look, whether to the social picture, or to the language, or to the ideas of the book, its recent origin forces itself upon us. The social picture and the ideas need not detain us here. Either Solomon was transported in prophetic ecstasy to far distant times (the Targum on Koheleth frequently describes him as a prophet), or the writer is a child of the dawning modern age of Judaism. The former alternative is plainly impossible. Political servitude, and a generally depressed state of society (exceptional cases of prosperity notwithstanding), mark the book as the work of a dark post-Exile period. The absence of any national feeling equally distinguishes it from the monuments of the earlier humanistic movement (even from Job). The germs of philosophic thought, which cannot be explained away, supply, if this be possible, a still more convincing argument. We shall return to these later on: at present, let us confine ourselves to the linguistic evidence, which has been set forth with such accuracy and completeness by Delitzsch[389] and after him by Dr. Wright of Dublin.
The Hebrew language has no history if Ecclesiastes belongs to the classical period; indeed, the Hebrew name of the book may seem of itself to stamp it as of post-Exile origin (see note on Koheleth in Appendix). The student would do well, however, to examine all the peculiar words or forms in Delitzsch’s glossary, and to classify them for himself, under two principal heads, (1) those which occur elsewhere but in distinctively late-Hebrew books, (2) those only found in Koheleth, with four subdivisions, viz., (a) words which can be explained from Biblical Hebrew usage, (b) those which belong to the vocabulary of the Mishna, (c) those of Aramaic origin and affinities, (d) those borrowed from non-Semitic languages. The student should also notice the striking grammatical peculiarities of Koheleth, especially the fact that the ordinary historic tense (the imperfect with Waw consecutive) is hardly ever used. The scholar’s instinct but three times reveals itself in the adoption of this old literary idiom (i. 17, iv. 1, 7), but elsewhere the usage of the Mishna is already law. Almost equally important is the fact that the Hebrew mood-distinctions are so little used in Koheleth (on which point see Delitzsch’s introduction); indeed, we may say upon the whole that that which gives a characteristic flavour to the old Hebrew style is ‘ready to vanish away.’ The Mishnic peculiarities of the book are especially interesting, as confirming our view of its origin. The author is very different in his opinions from the doctors of the Mishna, but he resembles them in his questioning and reflective spirit, and helped to form the linguistic instrument which they required. Less important, but not to be ignored, are the Aramaic elements. Even Dr. Adam Clarke, untrained scholar as he was, pronounced that the attempts which had as yet been made to overthrow the evidence, were ‘often trifling and generally ineffectual.’[390] The Aramaisms of Koheleth are irreconcileable with a pre-Exile date; they can only be paralleled and explained from the Aramaic portions of the books of Ezra and Daniel. That they are comparatively few, only proves that the force of the Aramaising movement has abated, and that the Hebrew language, at any rate in the hands of some of its chief cultivators, is passing into a new phase (the Mishnic). The judgment of Ewald, as already expressed in 1837, appears to me on the whole satisfactory: ‘One might easily imagine Koheleth to be the very latest book in the Old Testament. A premature conclusion, since Aramaic influence extended very gradually and secretly, so that one writer might easily be more Aramaic in the colouring of his style than another. But though not [even if not] the latest, it cannot have been written till long after Aramaic had begun powerfully to influence Hebrew, and therefore not before the last century of the Persian rule.’[391]
For the sake of my argument, it is hardly necessary to refer to the words of non-Semitic origin, which are (as most critics rightly hold) but two in number; 1 פַּרְדֵּם (ii. 5, plur.) undoubtedly a Hebraised Persian word, on which I lay no stress here, because it occurs, not only in Neh. ii. 8, but also in Cant. iv. 13, where many critics deny that it militates against a pre-Exile date, and 2 פִתְגָם (viii. 11), which occurs in the Aramaic parts of Ezra and Daniel, and also in Esth. i. 20, and while used in the Targums and in Syriac, did not become naturalised in Talmudic. This word, too, is commonly regarded as Hebraised Persian, but, following Zirkel, the eminent Jewish scholar Heinrich Grätz declares it to be the Hebraised form of a Greek word. Is this possible or probable? Are there any genuine Græcisms of language, and consequently also of thought, in the Book of Koheleth? An important question, to which we will return.
The date suggested by Ewald, and accepted by Knobel, Herzfeld, Vaihinger, Delitzsch, and Ginsburg, suits the political circumstances implied in Koheleth. The Jews had long since lost the feelings of trust and gratitude with which in ‘better days’ (vii. 10) they regarded the court of Persia; the desecration of the temple by Bagoses or Bagoes (Jos. Ant. xi. 7) is but one of the calamities which betel Judæa in the last century of the Persian rule. It is a conjecture of Delitzsch that iv. 3 contains a reminiscence of Artaxerxes II. Mnemon (died about 360), who was ninety-four years old, and according to Justin (x. 1), had 115 sons, and of his murdered successor Artaxerxes III. Ochus. Probably, if we knew more of this period, we should be able to produce other plausible illustrations. Certainly the state of society suits the date proposed. As Delitzsch remarks, ‘The unrighteous judgment, iii. 16; the despotic depression, iv. 1, viii. 9, v. 8; the riotous court-life, x. 16-19; the raising of mean men to the highest dignities, x. 5-7; the inexorable severity of the law of military service, viii. 8; the prudence required by the organised system of espionage,—all these things were characteristic of this period.’ Probably an advocate of a different theory would interpret these passages otherwise; but as yet no conclusive argument has been offered for supposing allusions to circumstances of the Greek period.
Let me frankly admit, in conclusion, that the evidence of the Hebrew favours a later date than that proposed by Ewald—favours, but does not actually require it. It seems, however, that if the book be of the Greek period, we have a right to expect some definite traces of Greek influence. This will supply the subject of the next chapter.
At any rate, the author addresses himself to Palestinian readers. He lives, not (I should suppose) in the country, as Ewald thought, but near the temple, or at least has opportunities of frequenting it (v. 1,[392] viii. 10). Some recent scholars place him in Alexandria; but the reference to the corn trade in xi. 1 does not prove this to be correct; indeed, the very same section contains a reference to rain (so xii. 2). Sharpe[393] is alone in preferring Antioch, the capital of the Greek kingdom of Syria. Kleinert’s remark that ‘king in Jerusalem’ (i. 12) implies a foreign abode is met by the remark that Jerusalem was in the writer’s time no longer a royal city. The author may have travelled, and like Sirach have had personal acquaintance with the dangers of court-life (either at Susa or at Alexandria). The references to the king do not perhaps compel this supposition; ‘are not my princes altogether kings?’ (Isa. x. 8) could be said of Persian satraps.
We now begin the consideration of the question, Are there any well-ascertained Græcisms in the language and in the thought of this obviously exceptional book? That there are many Greek loan-words in Targumic and Talmudic, is undeniable, though Levy in his lexicon has no doubt exaggerated their number. G. Zirkel, a Roman Catholic scholar, was the first who answered in the affirmative, confining himself to the linguistic side of the argument. His principal work,[394] Untersuchungen über den Prediger (Würzburg, 1792), is not in the Bodleian Library, but Eichhorn’s review in his Allgemeine Bibliothek, vol. iv. (1792), contains a summary of Zirkel’s evidence from which I select the following.
(a) יָפֶה, in sense of καλός ‘becoming’ (iii. 11, v. 17). This is one of the Græcisms which commend themselves the most to Grätz and Kleinert. The former points especially to v. 17, where he takes טוב אשר יפה together as representing καλὸν κἀγαθόν (comp. Plumptre on v. 18). The construction, however, is mistaken (see Delitzsch). The second אשר indicates that יפה is a synonym of וטב ‘excellent.’ The notion of the beautiful can be developed in various ways. The sense ‘becoming,’ characteristic of later Hebrew, is more distinctly required in iii. 11.
(b) ‘In the clause לָמָּה חָכַמְתִּי אֲנִי אָז יֹתֵר (ii. 15) the words אָז יֹתֵר must signify ἔτι μᾶλλον: quid mihi prodest majorem adhuc sapientiæ operam dare?’ But the demonstrative particle אז means, not ἔτι, but ‘in these circumstances’ (Jer. xxii. 15). Its position and connection with יתר are for emphasis. The fact of experience mentioned makes any special care for wisdom unreasonable.
(c) ‘עֳשׂׂות טוֹב (iii. 12) is a literal translation of εὖ πράττειν.’ This is accepted by Kleinert and also by Tyler. The very next verse seems to explain this phrase by ראה טוב (comp. v. 17); certainly the ethical meaning is against the analogy of ii. 24, iii. 22, and similar passages. But should we not, with Grätz and Nowack, correct רְאוֹת טוב in iii. 12?
(d) ‘כִּי הָאֱלֹהִים וגו (v. 19) must mean, God gives him joy of heart. ענה “respondere” seems to have borrowed the meaning “remunerari” from ἀμείβεσθαι, which has both senses. The ancient writer of the book thought thus in Greek, ὅτι θεὸς ἀμείβεται (αὐτὸν) εὐφροσύνῃ τῆς καρδίας.’ Zirkel forgets Ps. lxv. 6. See however Delitzsch.
(e) הֲלָךּ־נֶפֶשׁ (vi. 9) = ὁρμὴ τῆς ψυχῆς [M. Aurelius iii. 15]. But the phrase is idiomatic Hebrew for ‘roving of the desire.’
(f) יֵצֵא אֶת־כֻּלָּם (vii. 18). ‘The Hebrew writer found no other equivalent for μέσην βαδίζειν.’ But unless he borrowed the idea (that of cultivating the mean in moral practice), why should he have tried to express the technical term?
(g) כִּי־זֶה כָּל־הָאָדָם (xii. 13). ‘A pure Græcism, τοῦτο παντὸς ἀνθρὼπου.’ But how otherwise could the idea of the universal obligation to fear God have been expressed? Comp. the opening words of iii. 19.
To these may be added (h) ביום טובה (vii. 14) = εὐημερία (see however xii. 1); (i) the ‘technical term’ טור (i. 13, ii. 3, vii. 25) = σκέπτεσθαι [but good Hebrew for ‘to explore’]; (k) פתגם (viii. 11) = φθέγμα; (l) פרדם (ii. 15) = παράδεισος (see above).
No one in our day would dream of accepting these ‘Græcisms’ in a mass.
Zirkel tried to prove too much, as Grätz himself truly observes. Any peculiar word or construction he set down as un-Hebraic and hurried to explain it by some Greek parallel, ignoring the capacity of development inherent in the Hebrew language. His attempt failed in his own generation. Three recent scholars however (Grätz, Kleinert, and Tyler), have been more or less captivated by his idea, and have proposed some new and some old ‘Græcisms’ for the acceptance of scholars. To me it seems that, their three or four very disputable words and phrases are not enough. If the author of Koheleth really thought half in Greek, the Greek colouring of the language would surely not have been confined to such a few expressions. If מה־שהיה (vii. 24) were really derived from τὸ τί ἐστιν, as Kleinert supposes, should we not meet with it oftener? But the phrase most naturally means, not ‘the essence of things,’ but ‘that which hath come into existence;’ phenomena are not easily understood in their ultimate causes, is the simple meaning of the sentence. I have said nothing as yet of the supposed Græcism in the epilogue—the last place where we should have expected one (considering ver. 12). But Mr. Tyler’s proposal to explain הַכֹּל (xii, 13) by τὸ καθόλου or τὸ ὅλον (a formula introducing a general conclusion), falls to the ground, when the true explanation of the passage has been stated (see p. 232).
There are therefore no Græcisms in the language of the book. Of course ideas may have been derived from a Greek source notwithstanding. The book, as we have seen already, is conspicuous by its want of a native Jewish background, nor does it show any affinity to Babylonian or Persian theology. It obviously stands at the close of the great Jewish humanistic movement, and gives an entirely new colour to the traditional humanism by its sceptical tone and its commendations of sensuous pleasure. It is not surprising that St. Jerome should remark on ix. 7-9, that the author appears to be reproducing the low ideas of some Greek philosophers, though, as this Father supposes, only to refute them.
‘Et hæc inquit, aliquis loquatur Epicurus, et Aristippus et Cyrenaici et cæteræ pecudes Philosophorum. Ego autem, mecum diligenter retractans, invenio’[395] &c.
Few besides Prof. Salmon would accept the view that Eccles. ix. 7-9 and similar passages are the utterances of an infidel objector (see Bishop Ellicott’s Commentary); but it is perfectly possible to hold that there are distinctively Epicurean doctrines in the Koheleth. The later history of Jewish thought may well seem to render this opinion probable. How dangerously fascinating Epicureanism must have been when the word ‘Epicuros’ became a synonym in Rabbinic Hebrew for infidel or even atheist.[396] It is indeed no mere fancy that just as Pharisaism had affinities with Stoicism, so Sadducæism had with Epicureanism. As Harnack well says, ‘No intellectual movement could withdraw itself from the influences which proceeded from the victory of the Greeks over the Eastern world.’[397] Mr. Tyler,[398] however, and his ally Dean Plumptre, have scarcely made the best of their case, the Epicurean affinities which they discover in Koheleth being by no means striking. Much use is made of the De Rerum Naturâ of Lucretius—a somewhat late authority! But if points of contact with Lucretius are to be hunted for, ought we not also to mention the discrepancies between the ‘wise man’ and the poet? If Lucr. i. 113-116 may be used to illustrate Eccles. iii. 21, must we not equally emphasise the difference between the festive mirth recommended by Koheleth (ix. 7, 8 &c.) and the simple pleasures so beautifully sung by Lucretius (ii. 20-33), and which remind us rather of the charming naturalness of the Hebrew Song of Songs?[399] The number of vague analogies between Koheleth and Epicureanism might perhaps have been even increased, but I can find no passage in the former which distinctly expresses any scholastic doctrine of Epicureanism. For instance the doctrine of Atomism assumed for illustration by Dean Plumptre,[400] cannot be found there by even the keenest exegesis; the plurality of worlds is not even distantly alluded to, and the denial of the spirit, if implied in iii, 21 (see p. 212), is only implied in the primitive Hebrew sense, familiar to us from Job and the Psalter. The recommendation of ἀταραξία (to use the Epicurean term), coupled with sensuous pleasure (v. 18-20), requires no philosophic basis, and is simply the expression of a pococurante mood, only too natural in one debarred from a career of fruitful activity. Lastly, there is nothing in the phraseology either of the Hebrew or of the Septuagint to suggest an acquaintance with Epicureanism.
A stronger case can be made for the influence of Stoicism. The undoubted Oriental affinities of this system and its moral and theological spirit would, as Mr. Tyler observes, naturally commend it to a Jewish writer. We know that, at a somewhat later day, Stoicism exercised a strong fascination on some of the noblest Jewish minds. Philo,[401] the Book of Wisdom, and the so-called Fourth Book of Maccabees, have undeniable allusions to it; and more or less probable vestiges of Stoicism have been found in the oldest Jewish Sibyl[402] (about B.C. 140) and in the Targum of Onkelos.[403] But how does the case stand with Koheleth? First of all, are there any traces of Stoic terminology? That terminology varied no doubt within certain limits, and could not be accurately reproduced in Hebrew. Still even under the contorted forms of expression to which a Hebrew-writing Stoic or semi-Stoic might be driven we could hardly fail to recognise the familiar Stoic expressions, εἱμαρμένη, πρόνοια, φαντασία, φύσις, φρόνησις, ἀρετή. The Septuagint version ought to help us here. But among the twenty words almost or entirely peculiar to the Greek of Ecclesiastes, the only two technical philosophic terms are σοφία and γνῶσις.
Next, can we detect references to distinctive Stoic doctrines? Mr. Tyler lays great stress in his reply on the Catalogue of Times and Seasons (iii. 1-8), which he regards as an expansion of the Stoic ὁμολογουμένως ζῆν But the idea that there is an appointed order of things, and that every action has its place in it, is much more a corollary of the doctrine of Destiny than of the doctrine of Duty. The essence of the latter doctrine is that men were meant to conform and ought to conform to the Universal Order, acquiescing in that which is inevitable, shaping in the best way that which is possible to be moulded. Upon this the practical ethics of Stoicism depend. But this is the very point which is absent in Ecclesiastes. The Catalogue of Times and Seasons ends not with the Stoic exhortation ἐκπληροῦ τὴν χώραν, ‘Fulfil thy appointed part,’ but with the despondent reflection of the Fatalist, ‘What profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he toileth?’ (iii. 9.) A second argument is that the idea ‘There is no new thing under the sun’ (i. 9) is a phase of the Stoic doctrine of cyclical revolutions. But all that which gave form and colour to the Stoic doctrine is entirely absent—especially, as Mr. Tyler himself admits, the idea of ἐκπύρωσις. The idea, as it is found in Ecclesiastes, has nothing Stoic or even philosophical about it. It is simply an old man’s observation that human actions, like natural phenomena, tend to repeat themselves in successive generations.[404]
That there are analogies between Stoicism and the ideas of Koheleth need not be denied; Dr. Kalisch has collected some of them in his very interesting philosophico-religious dialogue.[405] Prominent among these is the peculiar use of the terms ‘madness’ and ‘folly.’ ‘From the followers of Zeno,’ remarks Dean Plumptre,[406] ‘he learned also to look upon virtue and vice in their intellectual aspects. The common weaknesses and follies of mankind were to him, as to them, only so many different forms and degrees of absolute insanity (i. 17, ii. 12, vii. 25, ix. 3).’ But this division of mankind into wise men and fools is common to the Stoa with the ancient Hebrew sages who ‘sat in the gate.’ When the great populariser of Stoicism says, ‘Sapientia perfectum bonum est mentis humanæ,’[407] he almost translates more than one of the proverbs which we have studied already. Another point of contact with Stoicism is undoubtedly the Determinism of the book, which, as Prof. Kleinert observes, leaves no room for freedom of the will, and fuses the conceptions of εἱμαρμένη and πρόνοια (see especially chap. iii.). But such Determinism need not have been learned in the school of Zeno. It is genuinely Semitic (did not Zeno come from the Semitic Citium?) What is the religion of Islam but a grandiose system of Determinism? Indeed, where is virtual Determinism more forcibly expressed than in the Old Testament itself (e.g., Isa. lxiii. 17)?
Those who adopt the view which I am controverting are apt to appeal to somewhat late philosophic authorities. I cannot here discuss the parallelisms which have been found in the Meditations or Self-communings (Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν) of the great Stoic emperor. Some, for instance, consider the ῥύσεις καὶ ἀλλοιώσεις which ‘renew the world continually’ (M. A. vi. 15) and the περιοδικὴ παλιγγενεσία τῶν ὅλων (M. A. xi. 1) to be alluded to in Eccles. i. 5-9. More genuine are some at least of the other parallelisms, e.g. Eccles. i. 9, M. A. vi. 37, vii. 1, x. 27, xii. 26; Eccles. ii. 25, M. A. ii. 3 (ad init.); Eccles. iii. 11, M. A. iv. 23 (ad init.); Eccles. vi. 9, M. A. iv. 26; Eccles, xi. 5, M. A. x. 26. I admit that there is a certain vague affinity between the two thinkers; both are earnest, both despair of reforming society, both have left but a fragmentary record of their meditations. But the ‘humanest of the Roman race’[408] stands out, upon the whole, far above the less cultured and more severely tried Israelite. Alike in intellectual powers and in moral elevation the soul of the Roman is of a truly imperial order. He is not, like Koheleth, a ‘malist’ (see pp. 201-202); he boldly denies evil, and his strong faith in Providence cannot be disturbed by apparent irregularities in the order of things. It is true that this does but make the sadness of his golden and almost Christian book the more depressing. But the book is ‘golden.’[409] Koheleth and M. Aurelius alike call forth our pity and admiration, but in what different proportions!
If, then, there are points of agreement between Koheleth and M. Aurelius, there must also of necessity be points of disagreement. Every page of their writings would, I think, supply them. Suffice it to put side by side the saying of Koheleth, ‘God is in heaven, and thou upon earth’ (v. 2), and M. Aurelius’ invocation of the world as the ‘city of God’ (iv. 23). The comparison suggests one of the greatest discrepancies between Koheleth and the Stoics—the doctrine of God. Such faith as the former still retains is faith in a transcendent and not an immanent Deity. The germs of a doctrine of Immanence which the older Wisdom-literature contains (Kleinert quotes Ps. civ. 30, Job xxvi. 13), have found no lodgment in the mind of our author, who is more affected by the legal and extreme supernaturalistic[410] point of view than he is perhaps aware.
Mr. Tyler’s introduction to his Ecclesiastes is a work of great acuteness and originality, and seeks to provide against all reasonable objections; I cannot do justice to it here. One part of his theory, however, is too remarkable to be passed over (see above, pp. 240, 241). He supposes that Stoic and Epicurean doctrines were deliberately set over against each other by the wise man who wrote our book, in order by the clash of opposites to deter the reader from dangerous and unsatisfying investigations. The goal of the author’s philosophising thus becomes the negation of all philosophy, and this ‘sacrificio dell’ intelletto’ he insinuatingly commends by the subtlest use of artifice. Such a theory may have occurred to one or another early writer (see Ginsburg), but seems out of harmony with the character of the author as revealed in his book. He is not such a weak-kneed wrestler for truth. You may fancy him sometimes a Stoic, sometimes an Epicurean; but he always speaks like a man in earnest, however his opinions may change through the fluctuations of his moods. Mr. Tyler’s theory confounds Koheleth’s point of view with that of a far inferior thinker, the author of Ecclesiasticus (see above, p. 199).
I cannot, therefore, be persuaded to explain this enigmatical book by a supposed contact with Greek philosophy such as we do really find in the Book of Wisdom. I have no prejudice against the supposition in itself. It would help me to understand the Hellenising movement at a later day if Stoic and (still more) Epicurean ideas had already filtered into the minds of the Jewish aristocracy. The denunciations in the Book of Enoch (xciv. 5, xcviii. 15, civ. 10) not impossibly refer to a heretical philosophical literature (see p. 233); the only question is, To a native or to a half foreign literature? I see no sufficient reason at present for adopting the latter alternative. Koheleth is really a native Hebrew philosopher, the first Jew who, however awkwardly and ineffectually, ‘gave his mind to seek and explore by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven’ (i. 13). Very touching in this light are the memoranda which he has left us. They are incomplete enough; Koheleth is but the forerunner of more systematic philosophisers. His ideas are nothing less than scholastic; how could we expect anything different, his first object being in all probability to soothe the pain of an inward struggle by giving it literary expression? If, however, I was compelled to suggest a secondary reference to any foreign system, I could most easily suppose one to the pessimistic teaching of Hegesias Peisithanatos, who, after Ptolemy Soter and Philadelphus had made Alexandria the seat of the world’s commerce and the centre of Greek literature and culture, was seized with the thought of the vanity of all things, of the preponderance of evil, and of the impossibility of happiness.[411] Koheleth’s teaching would be a safeguard to any Jew who might be tempted by this too popular philosopher. He admits ματαιότης ματαιοτήτων, but insists that, granting all drawbacks, ‘the light is sweet’ (xi. 7), the living are better off than the dead (ix. 4-6), and sensuous pleasure, used in moderation, is at least a relative good (ii. 24); also that it is futile to inquire ‘why the former days (of the earlier Ptolemies?) were better than these’ (vii. 10), and, if a later view of his meaning may be trusted, he sought to displace the many dangerous books which were current by words which were at once pleasantly written and objectively true (xii. 10, 12).
Koheleth is a native Hebrew philosopher. The philosophy of an eastern sage is not to be tied up in the rigid formulæ of the West. Easterns may indeed take kindly to Western doctrines; but where they think independently, they eschew system. Koheleth’s seeming Stoicism is, as we have seen, of primitive Hebrew affinities; his seeming Epicureanism, if it be not sufficiently explained as a mental reaction against the gloom of the times, may perhaps be connected more or less closely, not with the schools of Greek philosophers, but with the banquet-halls of Egypt. The Hebrew writer’s invitations to enjoy life remind us of the call to ‘drink and be happy,’ which accompanied the grim symbolic ‘coffin,’ or mummy, at Egyptian feasts (probably they were funeral-feasts), according to Herodotus (ii. 78), and of the festal dirges translated by Goodwin and Stern.[412] A stanza in one of the latter may be given here. It is from the song supposed to be sung by the harper at an anniversary funeral feast in honour of Neferhotep, a royal scribe, and still to be seen cut in the stone at Abd-el-Gurna, in the Theban necropolis. As Ebers has remarked,[413] the song ‘shows how a certain fresh delight in life mingled with the feelings about death that were prevalent among the ancient Egyptians, who celebrated their festivals more boisterously than most other peoples.’ By a poetic fiction, the dead man is supposed to be present, and to listen to the song.