Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Stephen Shead <srshead+bh AT gmail.com>]

Karl,

Thanks for the reply. A couple of quick comments.

On your counter-arguments to my perceived difficulties with Solomonic
authorship, I don't find them convincing, but am happy to leave it at an
amicable difference of opinion.

On my proposed alternative:

HOWEVER, if this were written some centuries later (later in the monarchic
>> period, after the exile, whatever), then it would be blatantly obvious to
>> all that this is a literary device, whereby Qohelet the wisdom teacher is
>> putting on the persona of the greatest and wisest king in history, for the
>> purpose of philosophical testing of all the potential "meaning-makers" in
>> life "under the sun". It would be neither cryptic nor deceitful - no less
>> than if I were to write a playful little piece on the English language,
>> presenting myself as a well-known English Bard observing with horror the
>> modern atrocities that have been committed with my plays...
>>
>
> This one has greater difficulties than to assume that Solomon wrote it.
>
> One of the things that I noticed about pre-Babylonian Exile writings are
> the extensive oblique statements where the reader has to think about what is
> said and to fill in data to make sense of the statements. Often that is
> accompanied by a large vocabulary. That is the reason, for example, that I
> say that Isaiah 30:14 refers to a blacksmith’s smithy that has been
> abandoned. So also Qohelet 2:15, the same thing happens to all people, wise
> and foolish, and while that one thing is not directly stated, upon
> cogitation one recognizes that he is talking about death. And that’s just
> one of his many oblique statements throughout the book.
>
> Post-Babylonian Exile authors apparently generally lacked the vocabulary
> and facility with the language to make these literary flourishes, evidence
> that Hebrew was for them a second language, not their primary language.
>

Actually, I didn't say post-exilic. I said "some centuries later", whether
pre- or post-exilic - basically, long enough for it to be obvious that he is
adopting the celebrated king's persona as a literary device. Could be one
century after Solomon, really.

So, if I concede, for the sake of argument, your point about post-exilic
authors, your difficulty with my proposal disappears for the "later in the
monarchic period" option (a long period of time!). And that was the only
"greater difficulty" you have mentioned so far.

The point I was trying to make was not to categorically disprove Solomonic
authorship. I was contrasting two alternatives:

1. Solomon wrote it: There are several anomalies which need to be answered,
in terms of the internal coherence of the text. (You believe they can be
adequately answered.)

2. My proposal: I still see no problems whatsoever in terms of plausibility.
(That doesn't mean there aren't any, of course......)

Stephen Shead
Centro de Estudios Pastorales
Santiago, Chile