Intro to Ecclesiastes

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Here's the question and answer from yesterday:
Fill in the blanks: “For with much wisdom comes much ______; the more knowledge, the more _______.” (Eccles 1)
Ecclesiastes 1:18 18 For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief.

And here's the question of the day:
What kind of people does the author of 2 Thessalonians warn them against, in the name of Jesus Christ? (2 Thess 3)

And here's the reflection of the day:
W. SIBLEY TOWNER begins a commentary on Ecclesiastes in this way: "Ecclesiastes has always had its fans among the original thinkers of the Jewish and Christian communities: skeptics, people with a dark vision of reality, recovering alcoholics. The rest of us know and love some of its individual epigrams and its more lyrical passages. On the whole, however, believers have found it at least baffling and at most wrongheaded" (NIB Commentary on Ecclesiastes).

I had a good chuckle when I started reading this commentary because that's exactly what has been going through my head as I've been reading through Ecclesiastes. I am a glass half full kind of person, and generally speaking, this book drives me NUTS! Except for its "individual epigrams and its more lyrical passages"of course--but even that's a stretch.

Towner's intro to Ecclesiastes includes the following declaration: "All dismissive talk about the book of Ecclesiastes is banned from the following pages." So too shall I follow Towner's lead and try to eliminate all dismissive talk . . . at least from this blog post. :0)

Pardon me for borrowing so frequently from Towner's commentary but it is written with a wonderful sense of humor--and most bible commentaries are terribly dry and dull. Also I am woefully deficit in my knowledge on this book of the Bible--so an intro to Ecclesiastes seems to be in order for all of us!

The author is known as "Qohelet," a title (not a name) meaning "the Preacher," "the Leader," or "the Teacher" depending on what translation of the Bible you use. Each title has a slightly different connotation and hints at the different functions the author of Ecclesiastes must have fulfilled. "The Teacher" seems to be the preferred translation.

The Teacher, as he shall be called, didn't really follow the rules when it comes to adhering to an existing genre of literature. I mean, Ecclesiastes isn't a narrative. It's not a story. It's not really a poem. It's not a letter. It is a kind of a collection of "standard cliches and of unique words or inflections of words" (Towner), which is really a hodge-podge more than anything else. Scholars seem to have settled on the vague category of "instruction" and "reflection" for Ecclesiastes.

Regarding the "plot" of the book of Ecclesiastes, Towner has this to say: "Every piece of literature, down to and including one’s laundry list, has a plot. That is to say, it moves according to some logic. It aims at some end and follows some structure in order to reach that end. Certain essays and books display their plots prominently, while others conceal them in elaborate ways. People tend to enjoy reading the former more than the latter. The same is true of biblical texts. They all have internal emphases, main points, punch lines, and the like. Some, such as Jonah or the Joseph narrative, are novellas with rising action, climactic moment, and falling action—just like Tom Jones or A Farewell to Arms. Others, such as the epistles of Paul, follow a more tortuous route toward their main emphases.

Either the book of Ecclesiastes has one of the most tortuous plots of any book of the Hebrew Bible, or else it has an extremely minimal one. The latter seems to be more likely. There is no story line." (This does nothing to enhance the readability of Ecclesiastes, I might add. Or its preachability too.)

And Towner includes a little vocabulary lesson for us as well:
"All": used in 41% of the 222 verses in the book; all "is useful to him because of his determination to reflect on the meaning of all life--not just Israelite life, not even just human life, but all of life. . . . more than any other book of the OT, this one attempts to arrive at understandings that will work everywhere and in every time."
"Vanity": 60% of all the uses of the word "vanity" in the Bible are found in Ecclesiastes; the actual meaning of the Hebrew word "hebel" is actually quite murky: depending on the translation, it is rendered "utterly vain," "useless," "utter futility," "nothing is worthwhile," "utterly absurd," "a vapor of vapors," and "meaningless! meaningless!" what all those phrases seems to be trying to indicate is that "vanity" is something without merit, an unreliable, probably useless thing.
"Toil": this is not exactly "work ethic"; Towner says it "almost always conveys such negative ideas such as trouble, weariness, sorry, mischief, and even oppression"; for the Teacher, "toil and life are practically identical"
"Wisdom": this word is used as both a noun/adjective and a verb; unlike other books of the Bible, this does not define "wisdom" as "fear of the Lord" nor as a synonym for the Torah, God's revealed will; he does seem to mean intellectual skill to be used in the discovery of truth, mental endowment of 'wise' people, a moral value/the opposite of folly
"Fate": chance; destiny; used to refer to "the outcome of life's struggles"; but here "the 'fate' that awaits human beings is far from mere chance or a random event . . . . For the Teacher, 'fate' is fact. It is decreed by God, even though one can learn nothing about this decree; it is death."

I hope this little intro is helpful to you. It has greatly benefited me. Now, I have to figure out which passage I'd like to preach on this week. There's always Ecclesiastes 3--but that's a little overused. So I'm looking for some new territory for this sermon.

Let me know if you have any suggestions!!