Chapter XIII

THE CANONICITY OF ECCLESIASTES AND ECCLESIASTICUS.

I.

It is not surprising that these strange Meditations should have had great difficulty in penetrating into the Canon. There is sufficient evidence (see the works of Plumptre and Wright)[425] that the so-called Wisdom of Solomon is in part a deliberate contradiction of sentiments expressed in our book. The most striking instance of this antagonism is in Wisd. ii. 6-10 (cf. Eccles. ix. 7-9), where the words of Koheleth are actually put into the mouth of the ungodly libertines of Alexandria. The date of Wisdom is disputed, but cannot be earlier than the reign of Ptolemy VII. Physcon (B.C. 145-117). The attitude of the writer towards Koheleth may perhaps be compared with that of the Palestinian teachers who relegated the book among the apocrypha on this among other grounds, that it contained heretical statements, e.g. ‘Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth’ &c. (xi. 9). Nothing is more certain than that the Book of Koheleth was an Antilegomenon in Palestine in the first century before Christ. And yet it certainly had its friends and supporters both then and later. Simeon ben Shetach and his brother-in-law, King Alexander Jannæus (B.C. 105-79), were as familiar with Koheleth as the young men of Alexandria, and Simeon, according to the Talmudic story[426] (_Bereshith Rabba_, c. 91), quoted Eccles. vii. 12_a_ with a prefix (דכתיב ‘as it is written’) proper to a Biblical quotation. From another Talmudic narrative (_Baba bathra_, 4_a_) it would seem that Koheleth was cited in the time of Herod the Great as of equal authority with the Pentateuch, and from a third (_Shabbath_, 30_b_) that St. Paul’s teacher, Gamaliel, permitted quotations from our book equally with those from canonical Scriptures. Like the Song of Songs, however, it called forth a lively opposition from severe judges. The schools of Hillel and Shammai were divided on the merits of these books. At first the Shammaites, who were adverse to them, carried a majority of the votes of the Jewish doctors. But when, after the destruction of Jerusalem, Jewish learning reorganised itself at Jamnia (4-½ leagues south of Jaffa), the opposite view (viz. that the Song and Koheleth ‘defile the hands’—i.e. are holy Scriptures) was again brought forward in a synod held about A.D. 90, and finally sanctioned in a second synod held A.D. 118. The arguments urged on both sides were such as belong to an uncritical age. No attempt was made to penetrate into the spirit and object of Koheleth, but test passages were singled out. The heretically sounding words in xi. 9_a_ were at first held by some to be decisive against the claim of canonicity, but—we are told—when the ‘wise men’ took the close of the verse into consideration (‘but know that for all this God will bring thee into the judgment’), they exclaimed יפה אמר שלמה, ‘Solomon has spoken appropriately.’[427]

This first synod or sanhedrin of Jamnia has played an important part in recent arguments. According to Krochmal, Grätz, and Renan, one object of the Jewish doctors was to decide whether the Song and Koheleth ought to be admitted into the Canon. It seems, however, to have been satisfactorily shown[428] that their uncertainty was not as to whether these books ought to be admitted, but whether they had been rightly admitted. It is true that there was, even as late as A.D. 90, a chance for any struggling book (e.g. Sirach) to find its way into the Canon. But in the case of the Song and Koheleth a preliminary canonisation had taken place; it only remained to set at rest all lingering doubts in the minds of those who disputed the earlier decision. Another matter was also considered, according to Krochmal, at the synod of A.D. 90, viz. how to indicate that with the admission of Ecclesiastes the Canon of the Hagiographa was closed. I have already referred to this scholar’s view of the Epilogue (p. 232 &c.), and need only add that, if we may trust the statement of the Talmud, the canonicity of Koheleth was finally carried in deference to an argument which presupposes that xii. 13, 14 was already an integral part of Koheleth. The Talmudic passage is well known; it runs thus—

‘The wise men’ [i.e. the school of Shammai] ‘sought to “hide” the Book of Koheleth because of its contradictory sayings. And why did they not “hide” it? Because the beginning and the close of it consist of words of Tōra’ [i.e. are in harmony with revealed truth][429]. By the ‘beginning’ the Jewish doctors meant Koheleth’s assertion that ‘all a man’s toil which he toileth _under the sun_’ (i.e. all earthly, unspiritual toil) is unprofitable (i. 3), and by the ‘close’ the emphatic injunction and dogmatic declaration of the epilogist in xii. 13, 14. The Talmudic statement agrees, as is well known, with the note of St. Jerome on these verses. ‘Aiunt Hebræi quum inter cætera scripta Salomonis quæ antiquata sunt, nec in memoriâ duraverunt, et hic liber obliterandus videretur, eo quòd vanas Dei assereret creaturas, et totum putaret esse pro nihilo, et cibum, et potum, et delitias transeuntes præferret omnibus; ex hoc uno capitulo meruisse auctoritatem, ut in divinorum voluminum numero poneretur, quòd totam disputationem suam, et omnem catalogum hâc quasi ἀνακεφαλαιώσει coarctaverit, et dixerit finem sermonum auditu esse promtissimum, nec aliquid in se habere difficile: ut scilicet Deum timeamus, et ejus præcepta faciamus’ (_Opera_, ii. 787).

The canonicity of Ecclesiastes was rarely disputed in the ancient Church. The fifth œcumenical council at Constantinople pronounced decisively in its favour. On the Christian heretics in the fourth century who rejected it, see Ginsburg, _Coheleth_, p. 103.

Let me refer again, in conclusion, to the story in which that remarkable man—‘the restorer of the Law’—Simeon ben Shetach plays a chief part. It not only shows that Koheleth was a religious authority at the end of the second or beginning of the first century B.C., but implies that at this period the book was already comparatively old, and, one may fairly say, pre-Maccabæan. I presume too that the addition of the Epilogue (see pp. 234-5) with the all-important 13th and 14th verses had been made before Simeon’s time.

II.

It was remarked above that as late as A.D. 90 there was a chance for any struggling book to gain admission into the Canon. Now for at least 180 years the Wisdom of Ben Sira had been struggling for recognition as canonical. In spite of the fact that it did not claim the authorship of any ancient sage, and that, like Koheleth, it contained some questionable passages, it was certainly in high favour both in Alexandria and in Palestine. As Delitzsch points out, ‘the oldest Palestinian authorities (Simeon ben Shetach, the brother of Queen Salome, about B.C. 90, seems to be the earliest) quote it as canonical, and the censures of Babylonian teachers only refer to the Aramaic Targum, not to the original work. The latter was driven out of the field by the Aramaic version, which, though very much interpolated, was more accessible to the people.’[430] Simeon ben Shetach was counted among the Jewish ‘fathers,’ and a saying of his is given in _Pirke Aboth_, i. 10. It is remarkable that the very same passage of _Bereshith Rabba_ (c. 91) which contains this wise man’s quotations from Koheleth (see above) also contains one from Sirach introduced with the formula בספרא דבן סירא כתיב, ‘in the book of Ben Sira it is written.’ The quotation is, ‘Exalt her, and she shall set thee between princes’—apparently a genuine saying of Ben Sira (Sirach), though not found in our Ecclesiasticus. The first word (‘Exalt her’) comes, it is true, from Prov. iv. 8, but, as Dr. Wright remarks,[431] Ben Sira ‘was fond of tacking on new endings to old proverbs.’ At a much later period, a quotation from Ben Sira (Sir. vii. 10?) is made by Rab (about 165-247 A.D.) introduced with the formula משום שנאמר, ‘because it is said,’ _Erubin_, c. 65_a_. Strack indeed supposes that Rab meant to quote from canonical Scripture, but by a slip quoted from Ben Sira instead; but this is too bold a conjecture. Lastly, Rabba (about 270-330 A.D.) quotes a saying of our book (Sir. xiii. 15; xxvii. 9) as ‘repeated a third time in the Kethubhim (the Hagiographa)’—משולש בכתובים, _Baba Kamma_, c. 92_b_.

It is quite true that, according to the Talmudic passage referred to on p. 196, the Book of Ben Sira stands on the border-line between the canonical and the non-canonical literature: the words are, ‘The Books of Ben Sira, and all books which were written thenceforward, do not defile the hands.’ But taking this in connection with the vehement declaration of Rabbi Akiba that the man who reads Ben Sira and other ‘extraneous’ books has no portion in the world to come,[432] we may safely assume that the Book of Ben Sira had a position of exceptional authority with not a few Jewish readers. It is equally certain, as the above quotations show, that even down to the beginning of the fourth century A.D. sayings of Sirach were invested with the authority of Scripture. Whatever, then, may have been the theory (and no one pretends that the Synods of Jamnia placed Sirach on a level with Koheleth), the practice of some Jewish teachers was to treat Sirach as virtually canonical, which reminds us of the similar practice of some Christian Fathers. St. Augustine says (but he retracted it afterwards) of the two books of Wisdom, ‘qui quoniam in auctoritatem recipi meruerunt, inter propheticos numerandi sunt’ (_De doctr. Christianâ_, ii. 8), and both Origen and Cyprian quote Sirach as sacred scripture. Probably, as Fritzsche remarks, Sirach first became known to Christian teachers at Alexandria at the end of the second century.

Footnote 425:

Plumptre, _Ecclesiastes_, pp. 71-74; Wright, _Koheleth_, pp. 67-70. It
is plainly impossible in the light of the history of dogma to place
Wisdom before Ecclesiastes. Yet Hitzig has done this. Nachtigal took a
sounder view in 1799 when he published a book on Wisdom regarded _als
Gegenstück des Koheleth_. It forms vol. ii. of a singular work called
_Die Versammlung der Weisen_, of which Koheleth forms vol. i.

Footnote 426:

See Schiffer, _Das Buch Kohelet nach der Auffassung der Weisen_, part
i., pp. 100-102.

Footnote 427:

_Midrasch Koheleth_, § 1, 3; comp. _Pesikta of R. Kahana_, § 8
(Schiffer, pp. 6, 7).

Footnote 428:

By Delitzsch; see Wright’s _Koheleth_, p. 471, and comp. Strack, art.
‘Kanon des A. T.’ in _Herzog-Plitt_, vol. vii.

Footnote 429:

I quote the characteristic closing words, תחילתו דברי תורה וסופו דברי
תורה (_Shabbath_, c. 30b).

Footnote 430:

_Gesch. der jüdischen Poesie_, p. 20.

Footnote 431:

_Koheleth_, p. 46.

Footnote 432:

See the passage from _Sanhedrin_ (Jer. Talm.), x. 28_a_, quoted at
length in Wright’s _Koheleth_, pp. 467-468.

AIDS TO THE STUDENT

The literature upon Koheleth is unusually large. Some of the most important books and articles have been referred to already, and the student will naturally have at hand Dr. Wright’s list in _The Book of Koheleth_ (1883), Introd., pp. xiv.-xvii. It may suffice to add among the less known books, J. G. Herder, _Briefe das Studium der Theologie betreffend_, erster Theil (xi.), Werke, ed. Suphan, Bd. x.; Theodore Preston, _Ecclesiastes, Hebrew Text and a Latin Version, with original notes, and a translation of the Comm. of Mendelssohn_ (1845); E. Böhl, _Dissertationes de aramaismis libri Koheleth_ (Erlangen, 1860); Bernh. Schäfer, _Neue Untersuchungen über das Buch Koheleth_ (Freiburg in Breisgau, 1870); J. S. Bloch, _Ursprung and Entstehungszeit des Buches Kohelet_ (Bamberg, 1872); _Studien zur Gesch. der Sammlung der althebr. Literatur_ (Breslau, 1876); C. Taylor, _The Dirge of Coheleth in Eccl._ xii., _discussed and literally translated_ (1874); J. J. S. Perowne, articles on Ecclesiastes in _Expositor_, begun 1879; M. M. Kalisch, _Path and Goal_ (contains translation of our book and much illustrative matter), 1880; A. Kuenen, _Religion of Israel_ (1875), iii. 153 &c., also _Onderzoek_ (1873), vol. iii., and article in _Theologisch Tijdschrift_, 1883, p. 113, &c.; S. Schiffer, _Das Buch Kohelet nach der Auffassung der Weisen des Talmud und Midrasch und der jüd. Erklärer des Mittelalters_, Theil i. (Leipz. 1885); Engelhardt, ‘Ueber den Epilog des Koheleth’ in _Studien und Kritiken_, 1875; Klostermann, article on Wright’s _Koheleth_, in same periodical, 1885. See also Pusey’s Daniel the Prophet, ed. 2, pp. 327-8, and the introduction to Prof. Salmon’s commentary in Ellicott. [Prof A. Palm’s bibliographical monograph, _Die Qohelet-Literatur, ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Exegese des Alten Testaments_, 1886, appeared too late to be of use.]