ABSTRACT
The Four Quartets, write the Church in ways which, while reading the Hebrew Bible, in particular Book of Ecclesiastes, through Christian eyes, fully acknowledge the Jewish contribution to the Church's self-understanding, its textuality in Jacques Derrida's sense. The Writings, in Hebrew Kethubim, in Greek Hagiographa, are third group of texts in the Hebrew Canon, regarded within Judaism as lesser in importance than the Law and the Prophets. They include the Psalms and what has become known as Wisdom literature, of which the best-known examples are the Book of Job, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. It is possible to suggest, however, that in writing the Church in the Four Quartets, T.S. Eliot does not ignore the complexity either of writing or of the Writings, whose role in the construction of the Church he clearly acknowledges. Words have a history, a past and a future, requiring Christians to accept that they think in terms derived from Jewish ways of thought.
