A New Translation of Job, Ecclesiastes and the Canticles (Electronic book text)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3INTRODUCTION TO ECCLESIASTES. Few books of the Old Testament have given rise to greater diversities of opinion than that which is called Ecclesiastes, or the Preacher. In regard to its form and its spirit, its subject and its meaning, its scope and design, its age and author, widely different opinions have been entertained, and defended with confidence and ingenuity. By different critics the author has been regarded as an Epicurean, a Sadducee, a sceptic, a fatalist. By others his chief aim is supposed to be to prove and maintain the doctrines of the immortality of the human soul, and a future state of retribution. Some of the ancient Jews, according to St. Jerome, entertained objections against this book, saying, that, " as some books, which Solomon wrote, had been lost, this too ought to be obliterated; because it asserted that the creatures of God are vain, and regarded all things as worthless, and preferred meat and drink and delicacies to every thing else; yet they said that the twelfth chapter alone, which summed up all he had written in the precept to fear God and keep his commandments, gave it a sufficient claim to be placed among the sacred books." * So in the Talmud we read, " Some of the wise men desired textit{to hide, TIMi, that is, to forbid the public reading of, the book Coheleth, because there were found in it words tending to heresy." f Others, because his language was contradictory. * See Comment. 6n Eccles. xii. 13, Jerome's Works, vol. ii. p. 787, edit. Martianay. ' t See Pesikta Eabbati, fol. 33, c. 1; Midrash, Cohel., fol. 311, c. 1; Va- jikra Kab., 28, fol. 161, c. 2; Tr. Schabb., fol. 30, c. 2. A consideration of the objections which have been made to the book in ancient and modern times, and of the apparent contradictions which perplex the reader, seems to be demanded...