ABSTRACT
The title means simply ‘The Preacher’; the book dates from the middle or late third century bc. Ecclesiastes hints at the fatalism of some Hellenic philosophy, and suggests a sense of the futility of mortal life very much at odds with both priestly Law and prophetic dynamism. Its lack of positive faith in the Hebrew tradition, its stress on the ‘vanity’ of life – so much at variance with the tradition of the Promise of destiny – made it suspect. Of all the books of OT, this was regarded with the most suspicion among Jewish scholars and religious leaders, and it was barely accepted into the canon. There is no allusion to it in NT. Like Proverbs and Solomon’s Song, Ecclesiastes was attributed to Solomon, and this, with its place in the Wisdom tradition, and the striking poetry of its best passages, found it a place. For a discussion, see Fisch (1988) 158–78.
