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.
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]]