ABSTRACT
One of the most important aspects of the study of the wisdom of Qoheleth is the problem of its relationship to the earlier wisdom of the Old Testament, particularly as represented in the gnomic or proverbial literature collected in Proverbs x-xxix. 1 The problem may be expressed in the following way: did Qoheleth regard himself as an exponent of “wisdom” in the same sense as the authors of the book of Proverbs? Was it his purpose to oppose the teaching of his predecessors in its entirety, or merely to modify certain aspects of it? Do the occasional apparently contradictory statements in the book show him to have been himself subject to doubts or contradictions, or was he rather quoting older sayings only to refute them? Or are we to follow some of the older critics and regard certain verses as having been added to the original text by interpolators? 2
