Biblical Hebrew Forum

[George Athas <George.Athas AT moore.edu.au>]

James,

I believe I was responding to Karl Randolph's comment:

"He also claims to have amassed wisdom above all who were before him,
1:16-18, which also points to Solomon, as none who followed could make that
claim."

Now, I think I'm about to bow out of this discussion. Before I do, here are 
my reasons for thinking that Solomon is merely the persona taken on by the 
author.


 1.  Taking on another persona is a legitimate literary/rhetorical device 
that is not necessarily aiming to deceive (cf. Dan 4).
 2.  Qohelet is a highly crafted book that uses a number of rhetorical 
techniques. It would be in no way unusual for the first point above to be one 
of them.
 3.  Linguistics and historical details imply that certain loanwords in the 
book have come via Persian and Aramaic. The most plausible timeframe for this 
to have occurred is the Persian Era.
 4.  The 'speaker' sounds like a wise citizen/subject (rather than monarch) 
in places like 8.2ff and 10.16ff. Now, this simply could be a monarch 
speaking with the persona of a subject, but if so, then you must concede my 
first two points above.
 5.  In talking about his 'reign', the speaker in ch.1 uses Qatal verbs. 
Particularly important is the use of the Qatal form of HYH in 1.12. If the 
speaker were actually still the king, then it is mighty unusual for him to 
use this form rather than a verbless clause. However, if the speaker is 
taking on the persona of someone from the distant past so that the reader can 
hear afresh the wisdom of ages past, then this particular syntactical choice 
becomes a lot more normal.
 6.  The tradition attributing the book to Solomon is old, but not old 
enough. At best it simply tells us what people at the turn of the era thought 
about the authorship of the book.
 7.  Solomon is never named in the book.
 8.  We have no other corroboratory evidence that Solomon had the name 
Qohelet.

For me, all this means that while it is possible that Solomon authored 
Qohelet, it is more plausible to argue that he did not.

OK, that's it for me on this one.


Regards,

GEORGE ATHAS
Moore Theological College (Sydney, Australia)
www.moore.edu.au