The Media Desk takes a look atEcclesiastes

Part Three: a Wrap

Part One: About the Book and Study Index.
Part Two: we do an in depth study of the book itself. (links below)

            "whew"

      Yeah, that one was a chore.

      These two studies started out with a question. 'what are the least studied books of the Old Testament?'
      We started with the Song of Solomon, and that was actually fun. Besides the ..... (engage whisper mode) - - - - "sex" - - - .... that everybody either downplays or ignores, you had a reference to King Solomon actually inviting his friends over for whatever passed for a 'kegger' in the ancient world to get, in a word, trashed.
      So The Song was fun.

      Ecclesiastes wasn't fun.

      Ecclesiastes wasn't fun, in any way, shape, or form.

      Yes, the Minor Prophets / the Book of the Twelve was work, and Revelation before that was a nightmare, well, several nightmares, actually. But at least with John's Apocalypse, there was a light, or make that, The LIGHT, at the end of the journey, which was the point of the exercise.

      With the first half of Ecclesiastes we took a journey through the deteriorating mind of 'the king' (we'll come back to that in a bit), and his descent into the absolute depths of classic melancholia.
      We saw his obsession with death, and his despair over his own legacy, as well as his successor on the throne and what he thought of the larger part of humanity... both of which he saw as fools.

      Another thing we ran into, and actually tripped over, in the book that was totally unexpected were several Messianic Prophecies. Both looking toward the Birth of the Messiah, and then on toward the Second Coming. Yes, they were in there. Couched in poetic language and, in effect, hiding in plain sight amongst all the "Vapor, vapor, all is vapor" type of sayings. One set of which is referenced by Christ. Although HE never directly quoted from Ecclesiastes, He most definitely used images from it, and the Pharisees would have recognized the reference.

      Something that we mentioned early on, and then carried the idea through the study was how some of the ideas presented, and even the the overall tone, in the book could be seen in everything from the Stoic Philosophers, such as our old friend the Emperor Marcus Aurelius (121 - 180, ruled 161 - 180) on through to today. Then we ran across an interesting reference to something similar to the overall mindset of the speaker in Ecclesiastes in the mind of Lord Macbeth as his life spirals out of control toward the end of the play.
      And now, we're going to mention a very similar state of mind that was experienced by a singer-songwriter, Jackson Browne (born 1948).

  "Doctor, my eyes have seen the years
   And the slow parade of fears without crying
   Now I want to understand
   I have done all that I could
   To see the evil and the good without hiding
   You must help me if you can

  "Doctor my eyes
   Tell me what is wrong
   Was I unwise
   To leave them open for so long ..."
"Doctor My Eyes", by Jackson Browne, self titled album, 1972, Crystal Records. (link below)

  "Doctor, my eyes
   Tell me what you see
   I hear their cries
   Just say if it s too late for me ..."
(part of the ending, see below)

      Part of the issues we ran into when looking at the various translations was how the modern editors had softened some of the statements in Ecclesiastes.
      Just as in John's Apocalypse and in the Minor Prophets, the translators 'turned down the heat a bit'. In the former, they didn't want to scare the hell out of the people, which was exactly the reason the Apostle wrote the thing that way (GOD told him to 'write what he saw' and he did). In the Book of the Twelve, some of the imagery and messages are just as unpleasant, but they wanted people to be able to read them without being nauseous.
      We have the same thing here. The core of the idea may still be in there, but the translators took some of the sting out of it.
      An example is when the 'king' says a 'stillborn child' is better off than a living man. Well, sort of. The Hebrew word there also includes the idea of a 'mid-term' miscarriage. See early in chapter six.
      The poetic language used here paints with the largest, heaviest, broadest brush he can find. As per our musical example, he's gone looking for all the good and evil, and now, maybe, he's seen too much. He is outlining the human condition with one of those huge brooms they use to cover a parking lot with tar instead of a microfine calligraphy brush.
      The terms used are all inclusive, you are either wise, or a fool, there's nobody in between. Life is either a pleasure, or misery, nobody has a day that is so-so. You are either the king, or a slave, or a 'wage slave' which works out about the same to him. And, we are either all living in God's Will, or we are doomed.... which turns out to be true.
      Except the Speaker, and / or the Collector, allows no middle ground at all on any of it. He tolerates no dissent. If you have a differing opinion, you're a fool. Which doesn't really sound all that wise as some of this stuff is subjective instead of a "thus saith the Lord".

      But let's change gears for a moment and talk about who wrote all this stuff down. Then later, we'll come to some sort of conclusion as to who said them,

      One of the questions that came up during the study was whether it was possible to glean more information about the one who had collected the sayings.
      Just from the text itself very little more can be reliably stated about who it was. However, that being said, from bit of outside research into fields like anthropology looking at the culture and some basic information about the times during the life of Solomon and on into the Babylonian captivity of Israel, we can put together at least part of a profile of who the Qoheleth (collector of sayings) was.
      Well. Yes. ... ... maybe.... possibly.
      We have to look at the life and times of those in Israel after the division of the kingdom, after the death of Solomon and the accession of Rehoboam in about 930 BC, which resulted in the succession of the Northern Tribes, leading to the eventual demise of the ancient Kingdom of Israel. See the story beginning in 2 Chronicles 10.
      There was a group who, instead of tending vineyards or herding sheep spent their time in the temple. They copied manuscripts and dedicated themselves to preserving the very things that made the Jews a unique, separate, people. What made them: The Jews, the Nation of Israel. There's places in the OT where it specifies that a special group had that information, and would go around with it, teaching. Again, see 2 Chronicles 17 beginning at verse 7 for the next handful of verses and compare that to the information in our text starting at 5 : 9.
      So while this is a total guess, it's probably a good one. And if the collector, and the writer, weren't, they were acting as: a Levite. He went around and listened to what the king had said.

      So who said all the proverbs that the collector put together?

      Solomon. ... ... with an asterisk.

      Plain and simple, the Original Source was probably King Solomon, the son of David, King in Jerusalem. Who, at one time, was considered the wisest man alive. Except, the book reads like the collector probably never even met him.

      Let's set up a possible scenario for where the sayings that became the Book of Ecclesiastes that we have now, came from.

      As we said before, Solomon died in 930 BC (give or take a handful of years), after turning into.... whatever he became... see 1 Kings 11 : 1 - 9 and following. Then his son, Rehoboam proved that he was the fool talked about in Ecclesiastes,. The kingdom splits, and some might say "fragments", and one of Solomon's ranking staff members, Jeroboam, ends up king in the north, and that doesn't go so well. Resulting in what are called the "lost tribes of Israel" beginning in 720 BC. While Judah (which included most of Benjamin and what was left of Simeon), hung on as a separate nation until Babylon changed that in about 590 BC.

      So it is unlikely that there was ANY "living memory" of King Solomon or any of his sayings that weren't in the Book of Proverbs, or, apparently, in "the book of the annals of Solomon" that is mentioned in 1 Kings 11 : 41, which is different from the Chronicles.

      Change the scene to Babylon. Where, in the pub across the street from where The Collector, possibly a 'misplaced Jew' is writing a Kosher Cookbook, you have a stage production based on King Solomon acquiring one of his many concubines. It's naughty, has a bit of political commentary in it, and gives the audience a taste of the Good Old Days when being a Jewish Nation meant something. Our 'Collector' decides to spend some time listening to some old men and women talk about what their great-grandparents told them about what had been said to them about Solomon 'back in the day'.
      He writes out some of the sayings, with a bit of editing here and there to make them readable, adds some commentary, and trots off to his publisher. Perhaps right behind the play writer who said "hey, this was a hit with the supper crowd on weekends!".

      As with The Song (see link to our study of that below), The Book of Ecclesiastes is in the STYLE of the Wisdom Literature of Solomon, as is the book called "The Wisdom of Solomon" (see link below to the KJV version). It is one of the books that were IN the Bible longer than they have been OUT of the Bible, but that is a discussion for another time.
      In any case, all three of these are indisputably ancient, but they're not THAT ancient. "the Wisdom" was probably written, distilled from older material, just as the Septuagint was being codified a couple of hundred years BC, while Song and Ecclesiastes already existed.

deep breath.... shucks, our glass is empty

      OK. We're done with this one. And we're all about ready to ask the waiter if there's an empty chair at that table where Qoheleth and MacBeth are brooding over their lunch with Jackson Brown, where they've been discussing the words of some "prophet of doom" (keep with us, we'll explain that).

      Yes, we are doomed. Yes, nothing we do around here in This World makes a whole heck of a lot of difference in the Eternal. And when you come down to it, our stay here isn't all that long (like we said, hang on for just a moment).

      We have Liza Minnelli (born 1946) waiting just off stage, where Lord MacBeth's friend had been earlier, we'll have her come out and close this outing with her biggest hit, and the best scene in the show. (take that as meaning the movie, and this essay)

      And. Oddly enough. It is right on topic for what we've been through, and somewhat in line with when the Wise Man told the Young Man to enjoy life toward the end of chapter eleven, but perhaps with a bit of moderation. Which would be wise? No?

Cue the music, we're going to go put some ice in a Dean Martin glass.

"What good is sitting alone in your room?
    Come hear the music play
    Life is a cabaret, old chum
    Come to the cabaret."

"Put down the knitting, the book and the broom
    It's time for a holiday
   Life is a cabaret, old chum
    Come to the cabaret

    Come taste the wine
    Come hear the band...."

"....What good's permitting some prophet of doom
    To wipe every smile away?"...

"Start by admitting
    From cradle to tomb
    It isn't that long a stay.
       Life is a Cabaret, old chum......"
Caberet Film version, 1972, see full information below.

Outside resources:

The Original 1611 King James Bible
The Wisdom of Solomon https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Wisdom-of-Solomon-Chapter-1/

Doctor My Eyes:
Live Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wF7zc_YK6A
More from SongFacts.com https://www.songfacts.com/facts/jackson-browne/doctor-my-eyes
The Album, song title on page is link to lyrics: Jackson Browne, released 1972 https://www.jacksonbrowne.com/discography/jackson-browne/

Face it, this is the highlight of the thing, some of the other numbers were... well.:
Caberet: Video with Liza Minnelli and her smile: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MY2_Nlx1q4I
Writers: Kander, Ebb, Cosson. Film version 1972, ABC Pictures.
Tony award winning stage play, and movie, based on other material. See below for more. The Play: https://goldenthroats.fandom.com/wiki/Cabar
-and-
The Film: https://goldenthroats.fandom.com/wiki/Cabaret_(1972_film)

The Media Desk takes a look at the Song of Solomon https://themediadesk.com/newfiles7/sosintro.htm

NOTE: The Bible Study Lesson presented above is posted as a reference document to begin a conversation of the topic. And that's it. Please accept it at such.

http://centralparkchurchofchrist.org