• Authorship
• • Supporting Solomon as author
  • • Eccl. 1:1 suggests the author is to be equated with Solomon
    • Eccl. 2:4-8 seems to describe Solomon
    • Tradition identifies Solomon as author
  • Against Solomon as author
  • • "Son of David" in Eccl. 1:1 may merely mean "descendant of David"
    • Eccl. 1:12 suggests the author "has been" king over Israel but apparently is no longer king - Solomon, however, was king until he died
    • Language of the book is very late Hebrew (300-200 B.C.E.) And the book contains two Persian words

• Meaning of "Qoheleth"
• • Apparently describes an office or function
  • Possible suggestions derived from the Hebrew root qhl "assemble, gather"
  • • Assembler of people for a specific purpose - gave rise to the Greek title Ecclesiastes as someone who assembled people for worship
    • Gatherer of women - a veiled reference to Solomon
    • Gatherer of wisdom - a reference to a teacher seeking to accumulate, test, and order wisdom

• Date

• Those who claim Solomonic authorship believe Ecclesiastes was written near the end of Solomon's life as the old king reflected back upon his life - probable date would be c. 925 B.C.E.

  • Those who doubt Solomonic authorship believe the book was written in the 3^rd century B.C.E. due to the late Hebrew and two Persian words

• Nature of the Book
• • No clear literary structure
  • Appears to be reflections of an older wise man who looks back on his pilgrimage of faith through wisdom
• Teachings of the Book
• • Negative
  • • Human life is transitory
    • • In the end death comes to all and eliminates any advantage in life
      • Fame (Eccl. 1:11), wealth (Eccl. 2:4-11, 5:10), wisdom (Eccl. 2:12-17), work (Eccl. 4:4), and righteousness (Eccl. 7:15-20) do not satisfy as ultimate goals in life
      • The poem concerning old age or the decay of a city or spring (Eccl. 12:1-8) emphasizes that no one can control his birth or death - people are creations, not gods
    • Wisdom cannot achieve its goal of showing how to live life
    • • Everything has its time but it is impossible to know when the time is right for something (Eccl. 3:1-11)
      • God has allowed people to think deeply and abstractly yet people cannot discover precisely what God has done, is doing, or will do - this emphasizes that people are finite creatures
  • Positive
  • • One should enjoy eating, drinking, and working (Eccl. 2:24, 3:13, 9:7,10) - these activities are the simple pleasures and bases of human life
    • Take risks and try things - do not give up and let life pass by (Eccl. 11:1-4)
    • Although wisdom could not supply all the answers, the author continued to search for wisdom (Eccl. 9:16, 10:10, 12:9-10) - wisdom and fearing God was still the best way to approach life
  • Book served as a corrective to wisdom
  • • Many wise men believed that wisdom was the key to understanding and having a relationship with God
    • For such wise men, wisdom became the ultimate good thing
    • Author of Ecclesiastes said that wisdom had no ultimate value and could not do everything the wise men said it could, yet wisdom was a better approach to life than folly
  • Epilogue of the book (Eccl. 12:9-14)
  • • Blunts the message of the book and attempts to smooth things over
    • Probably added by someone who thought the book was too negative and harsh and wanted the book to end on a positive note - the editor was probably unimpressed and quite uneasy with the author's questioning of life, justice, faith, and wisdom
    • Author was questioning the whole idea of an "easy faith" while the editor of the epilogue was promoting an easy faith that overlooked the realities and complexities of life - the two writers completely disagreed

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