Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Ok, Karl. I'm yet to see any hard data from you to back up your assertions. 
At the moment the argument sounds like a chasing after the wind. I've given 
data and given my conclusion based on them. If you think the hard data I'm 
dealing with is silence, then we have nothing to talk about.

Just for the record:

  *   Qohelet is not a modern history book. It's an ancient philosophical 
diatribe, mostly in the first person. BIG difference!
  *   Qohelet was not produced by a modern author who signed a contract with 
a publishing house so that authorship and copyright can be legally and 
factually verified.
  *   To project modern publication practices onto the ancient world is 
either a very poor parallel from which to argue, or evidence of a naïve 
handling of literature.
  *   Where are the 'high literature' examples that are comparable to Qohelet 
from the pre-exilic era?
  *   Amongst Jewish literature, the closest parallels to Qohelet are Ben 
Sira and Wisdom of Solomon (both Hellenistic).
  *   In terms of genre, the closest comparisons exist in the Hellenistic 
philosophical diatribe. Teles of Megara is a very good example.
  *   There is plenty of evidence against your 'possibilities'. Your 
possibilities cannot be be 100% disproved, but neither can the possibility 
that Qohelet was an alien from a planet called Pnegamulch. You refuse to 
adequately take on board the weighting of possibilities, but rather treat 
them all flatly with equal weight. This is poor logic and argumentation. 
Probability outweighs possibility. At the very least, the evidence you don't 
want to consider (what you mystifyingly call 'silence') you discount in terms 
of its logical 'weight', and privilege your preferred option (which is 
largely silence) by adding undue balast to it. You're basically saying that a 
feather weighs just as much if not more than a rock. Mystifying!
  *   Given the quality of the argument you've put up, I suspect nothing I 
say will convince you.


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