Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Stephen:

My number one objection is theological, not linguistic, therefore off list
for this group.

On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 5:53 PM, Stephen Shead <srshead+bh AT gmail.com> wrote:

>
> 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.
>

True, you didn’t say post-exilic. The reason I assumed that is because all
other authors that I know of argue for a post-exilic authorship, based on
the ideas presented.

But if you admit to pre-exilic authorship, then do you not run into the main
objection cited by others that the ideas presented were common during the
Hellenistic period, but “unknown” during the pre-exilic monarchy?

>
> 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.)
>

I personally don’t perceive any anomalies that need answering. but this
could be a case of different people perceiving different things differently.
We may have to do a case by case analysis rather than broad generalities for
me to see what you are talking about.

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

Now my main problem becomes historic, not linguistic. Of the recorded
histories of all the kings in Jerusalem, which one was noted as:

• son (descendent) of David
• exceedingly wise
• apostasy
• very wealthy
• multiple wives and concubines

I probably could mine a few other factors, but the picture becomes clear
that only Solomon fits the picture. None of the other kings fit all the
factors. So that rules out any of the other kings as being the author.

What about the idea that a commoner wrote it and using the picture of
Solomon as a literary foil? The first objection I see is theological, namely
that God would not allow a book to be part of the Bible that was intended
for all times, yet be understood only by a particular people and time. It’s
bad enough that Hebrew language itself is only imperfectly understood, yet
it is well enough understood that the main ideas in Tanakh are correctly
understood. But to have a literary construct that misleads all but the
original audience is just plain out of the picture.

Apart from the theological argument, I don’t see any real objections to that
theory. After all, that literary foil was used in the Apocrypha, both Old
and New Testaments. But those books are not canonical. The only objection
that I see right now is that Qohelet is part of canon.

>
>
> Stephen Shead
> Centro de Estudios Pastorales
> Santiago, Chile
>

Karl W. Randolph.