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  • From: Ron Snider <sarasotapt AT comcast.net>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Qohelet
  • Date: Fri, 11 Sep 2009 15:24:08 -0400


George wrote:

There's a critical distinction to be made when it comes to literature written
in the first person: the 'speaker' in the text is not necessarily the actual
author. What I mean is that an author may take on the persona of someone else
(real or fictional) and write from the perspective of that person. It's a
very common technique. So, it is an assumption to say that because the
'speaker' in Qohelet claims to be Solomon that Solomon must be the author.
You might be right, but you have made a logical leap on the basis of an
assumption to say that. Therefore, in the same way that you call for someone
to prove the author was not Solomon, so also you would need to prove that it
was.

Having said that, I find it very odd that the 'speaker' never actually comes
out and calls himself Solomon. Reading the Hebrew, I would argue it is far
more likely that the speaker (and the author?) was named Qohelet. But again,
I cannot prove that; I can only postulate it.

I agree completely with your assessment that an author can write from the perspective of another person. However, can you provide any significant examples of this in the Hebrew Old Testament? If the speaker is claiming to be Solomon, and is not, that makes him a bald-faced liar. Why would anyone read "spiritual literature" if the author was known, or even thought, to be yanking your chain?

Personally, I would not take any such literature too seriously, particularly literature that has "spiritual roots".
Again, my only point is that the best evidence points to Solomon, and when others seek to get around this be redating the text based on a few loan words, I don't find that to be good scholarship. Solomon appears to have had as much, and likely far more, interaction with other nations than other Hebrew king, and that during the time of greatest peace in Israel. The fact that he would have had a breadth of vocabulary, given his purported wisdom, and documented interactions with other cultures, does not strike me as strange in the least.

Regards,

Ron Snider





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