Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Donald:

On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 12:02 PM, Donald R. Vance, Ph.D. <
donaldrvance AT mac.com> wrote:

> There is no authorship for Qoheleth given in the text.
>

Oh yes there is. Though Solomon is not listed by name, he is by reference,
“son of David, king in Jerusalem”. There was only one king in Jerusalem who
fit the description of the actions listed in the book, namely Solomon.


> There is no dating given in the text.
>

Yes there is, namely Solomon’s expressions.


> As for your progression, do you really rate the style of the Prophetic
> (Deuteronomic) History low?
>

No, Deuteronomy was written by Moses, ca. 1400 BC.


> It's some of the best writing we see in antiquity, anticipating novelistic
> developments by over two millenia. Yet it dates to ca. 550 B.C., your "low"
> period.
>

Where do you get your date?


> Qoheleth has to be dealt with on content, world view, and style and that in
> comparison with other works outside the Bible.
>

Not at all. In many ways Tanakh was unique among ancient writings, espousing
ideas foreign to those of the countries surrounding Israel. In fact, from
the history recorded in Tanakh, most of the time even Israel did not follow
those ideas.

The only ancient tome that followed the same ideas is the New Testament.


> You have a satire on the acquisition of "wisdom and knowledge" without the
> fear of the Lord, i.e., direct experience of God, in Qoheleth. To pursue
> them without the knowledge of God is to become a cynic. These are the
> developments that are found in Apocalypticism and this is a later
> phenomenon.
>

You are making an argument based on silence—because you don’t know of any
other such writings that were early, therefore they didn’t exist, nor could
Qohelet be a precursor for such.

That is also understood by many as a type of anti-Semitism, namely making
the assumption that ancient Jews couldn’t have been the initiators of ideas
that later became common among other peoples as well. Why couldn’t Solomon
have been an initiator of these ideas?

>
> Donald R. Vance, Ph.D.
> Professor of Biblical Languages and Literature
> Oral Roberts University
> dvance AT oru.edu
> donaldrvance AT mac.com
>
> Karl W. Randolph.