Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [152]
Even if Qoheleth was not himself a king and merely adopting that role as a literary conceit, he belonged to a class of people who were both working hard and benefiting from the newfound affluence:
Behold, what I have seen to be good and to be fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of his life which God has given him, for this is his lot. Every man also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them, and to accept his lot and find enjoyment in his toil-this is the gift of God. For he will not much remember the days of his life because God keeps him occupied with joy in his heart. (Eccles 5:18-20)
On the other hand, he is quite upset with a number of aspects of this new moneyed economy. He sees oppression of the poor, economic injustice, and even sudden ruin:
No man has power to retain the spirit, or authority over the day of death; there is no discharge from war, nor will wickedness deliver those who are given to it. (Eccles 8:8)
He advises that investment and assumption of risk are profitable activities but should be balanced by charity for the less fortunate:
Cast your bread upon the waters,
for you will find it after many days.
Give a portion to seven, or even to eight,
for you know not what evil may happen on earth.
(Eccles 11:1-2)
Qoheleth admits that the newfound economic affluence is good but then critiques the accompanying greed. His message, that all is vanity, is meant to put this affluence in the correct perspective. Life is not just a race to accumulate the most goods, as it is full of terrible misfortunes and upheavals, and it always ends in death.
It is quite possible that this perception took place during the Persian period, as Seow suggests. It is also possible that the setting is the beginning of the Greek period, after the conquest of Alexander in 332 BCE. Indeed, as Seow himself has shown, and as a number of other people have suggested, the economic characteristics of the Hellenistic period were already well established during the Persian period.5 If the Persians presided over the “takeoff” period of the economy, the Hellenists brought the development of true international trade, which Judea was well positioned geographically to exploit. In fact, the Jews complained bitterly of the lack of prosperity and affluence in the early Persian period (Neh 9:32-39). But Greek documents show a very comfortable, new urban class, the very ones who can appreciate the value of the new Hellenistic culture. To distinguish between the the cultural conditions of the end of the Persian period and the beginning of the Ptolemaic one may be impossible in Ecclesiastes.
Ecclesiastes is important for the history of the development of the notion of the afterlife, especially because it emphasizes that the idea does not develop early among Jewish aristocrats living in the land of Israel. If he were so disposed, Qoheleth could have appealed to either of two, well-developed foreign notions of beatific afterlife. He might have used either to encourage people to be honest and lead moral lives. But, evidently, he came to the opposite conclusion, and thus the book can be seen as a companion piece to the book of Job:
Moreover I saw under the sun that in the place of justice, wickedness was there, and in the place of righteousness, wickedness was there as well. I said in my heart, God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for he has appointed a time for every matter, and for every