What then could Jahvism say when a time arrived wherein it must defend itself against a Jahveh-created world?
[1] Job and Solomon, or the Wisdom of the Old Testament. By T. K. Cheyne. (1887.) Those who wish to study the Solomonic literature should read this excellent work. It is very probable, although Professor Cheyne does not suggest this, that a dramatic “Morality” from which Job was evolved, was imported by Solomon along with the gold of Ophir from some Oriental land.
Chapter XI
Wisdom (Ecclesiasticus).
It was necessary that Koheleth should be answered, but who was competent for this? A fable had been invented of a Solomonic serpent who had tempted Eve to taste the fruit of knowledge which, when the man shared it, brought a curse on the earth, but the canonical prophets do not appear to have heard of it, and at any rate it was too late in the day to meet fact with fable. Nor had Jahveh’s whirlwind-answer to Job proved effectual. However, some sort of answer did come, and significantly enough it had to come from Koheleth’s own quarter, the Wisdom school. Pure Jahvism had not brains enough for the task.
The apocryphal book “Ecclesiasticus” is the antidote to Ecclesiastes. (These are the Christian names given to the two books.) This book, bearing the simple title “Wisdom,” compiled and partly written by Jesus Ben Sira early in the second century B. C., is as a whole much more than an offset to Koheleth. It is a great though unintentional literary monument to Solomon, and it is the book of reconciliation, or so intended, between Solomonism and Jahvism,—or, as we should now say, between philosophy and theology.
The newly discovered original Hebrew of Ecclesiasticus xxxix. 15, xlix. 11, published by the Clarendon Press in 1897, enables us to read correctly for the first time the portraiture of Solomon in xlvii., with the assistance of Wace and other scholars:
12. After him [David] rose up a wise son, and for his [David’s] sake he dwelt in quiet.