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The Book of Ecclesiastes (Qoheleth)

THE BOOK OF Ecclesiastes was written during the Persian period (539-332 BCE) or, a bit later, during the early Hellenistic period (332 BCE-65 BCE). Along with Job, it is an articulate denial of life after death. It is so pointed a denial that one is forced to the conclusion that the Jews were aware of notions of afterlife in Persian and Greek culture.

Interestingly, the “stoicism” in Ecclesiastes might have come from almost any period of Israelite thinking, as a certain fatalism has been part of Near Eastern Wisdom literature since its inception.2 But the grammar, word usage, and syntax indicate that the book was written in Second Temple times. Ecclesiastes is traditionally thought to date from the time of Solomon, who is identified as the narrator, Qoheleth, on the grounds that the narrator describes himself as “a scion of David, king in Jerusalem” (Eccles 1:1). There are no strong grounds for the identification with Solomon. The English title “Ecclesiastes” comes from the Latin transcription of the Greek translation of the term qoheleth, which was taken to mean something like “a member of the assembly.” The rabbis, noting the fatalistic tone in it, said that although it was written by Solomon, it was written during his declining, more cynical years-the product of an old, worldly-wise and pessimistic man, who despite his greatness was also guilty of a number of very worldly sins. And so a remarkable document has come down to us by ascription to an undisputedly great, though tarnished, Judean king.

The most recent, full treatment of the book, Ecclesiastes by Choon-Leong Seow for the Anchor Bible, is a sober and almost convincing argument for its Persian provenance. To begin with, there are two widely recognized Persian loanwords in Ecclesiastes: pardes (2:5) meaning “garden, orchard” (cognate with Greek paradeisos and English “paradise”) and pitgam (8:11) meaning “proverb, aphorism” (cognate with Greek apophthegmos and English “apothegm”). The word “paradise” is, of course, crucial for the development of notions of the afterlife. But it has not yet been put to the purpose of describing our ultimate disposition.

These words are important because there is no clear evidence of any Persianism in Israelite documents prior to the Achaemenid period. Yet, we should be careful about concluding too much from these terms. Both these early Persian words-“paradise” and “apothegm”-are also found in Greek, either by cognation or by borrowing; they may just as well be an argument for Hellenization.

More importantly for the Persian dating, there are a great number of Aramaic phrases in Ecclesiastes. Aramaic was the lingua franca of the Persian Empire in its western provinces. Because of its closeness to Hebrew, Aramaic words were accepted readily into Hebrew, far more easily than Persian or Greek words. Indeed, many ancient writers seem unaware of the distinction. By the Roman and Byzantine periods, Aramaic had virtually replaced Hebrew as the common tongue. At the same time, many Greek and even Latin words were accepted into general parlance but the rate of absorption was much slower by comparison to Aramaic.3 Persian words also creep in here and there, especially in the Talmudic period, where the major Jewish community was found in Babylonia. All of this makes certain that the book of Ecclesiastes dates to the end of the Persian or to the beginning of the Greek period in Israelite history. No other explanation seems realistic, but neither is there adequate grounds for more specificity.

One of the most obvious changes in Israelite life by the end of the Persian period was the rise of a commercial and monetary economy. The change to a moneyed economy can be seen in the epigraphy of the period and it can be seen here in Ecclesiastes. Seow notes that the effects of the new economic system on the wisdom literature in Ecclesiastes: “One who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor whoever loves abundance with yield” (5:10). This statement