The use of hebel in Ecclesiastes: A political and economic reading (original) (raw)
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The use of hebel in Ecclesiastes: A political and economic reading
HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies
A hermeneutical cloud still dominates ongoing discourse on the meaning and application of הֶבֶל (hebel), a crucial weaving thread in the book of Ecclesiastes. The Hebrew Qoheleth, presumably the disguised author, proposes the theological ideology of hebel as the totality of human existence in this book. What does Qohelethintend to achieve by asserting and dismissing everything in human experience as hebel (vanity, meaningless, worthless, not beneficial, absurd and enigma)? This article proposes a political and economic reading of Ecclesiastes, holding that the author, from personal observation, saw and addressed life from the point of view of ivory tower aristocrats who sought to control their environment by every means to their benefit. It suggests that a political and economic reading of Ecclesiastes locates another perspective on Qoheleth’s purposes for the use of hebel. As such, it argues that the Qoheleth uses hebel as a literary rhetorical device as an evaluative grid to criti...
Is Life Vanity? Reinterpreting the Qoheleth's Elusive Use of Hevel in Ecclesiastes
Journal of Religion and Human Relations, 2022
Over the years, the translation of hevel as "vanity" has had great influence in the history of the exegesis of Ecclesiastes. This present author has often heard or seen preachers use the text under study to caution people about the "vanity" of life and of acquisition of riches. Often preachers have used this text to call their audience to "abandoned resignation"; since for them, the Qoheleth's statements connote that all that occurs under the sun is "vanity". This paper tries to critically reexamine how the Qoheleth uses the word, hevel in Ecclesiastes in order to understand the essence of the book. The methodologies adopted are the historical-critical analysis and grammatical-historical analysis approaches. The findings show that the Qoheleth does use hevel with a variety of nuances. However, the basic meaning of the word is "vapor", "breath" but sometimes the context points to "temporary" sometimes to "ungraspable". Thus, the Qoheleth may not have been pessimistic about life but only disturbed about life's essence in the light of its ephemeral or transient nature. The study ended by recommending that people should not be passive in life. Life can be meaningful and enjoyable when people obey God's laws and fear Him.
Twentieth- and Twenty-first-century Readings of Hebel (הֶבֶל) in Ecclesiastes
The meaning of הֶבֶל is a crux interpretum for the book of Ecclesiastes. Notwithstanding some variation, Jerome’s vanitas reading of הֶבֶל in Ecclesiastes dominated scholarship for several centuries. Since the rise of modern biblical scholarship, הֶבֶל as ‘vanity’ has been largely rejected; however, little consensus has been reached regarding the word’s meaning. The result has been a rich history of interpretation as scholars develop various suggestions for how הֶבֶל should be understood in Ecclesiastes. This essay briefly sketches the history of interpretation of הֶבֶל, then surveys proposals for the meaning of הֶבֶל in Ecclesiastes during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Perhaps there is no text from the Hebrew Bible that better speaks to our world’s current situation more than that of Ecclesiastes. The passage considered in this exegesis (Ecclesiastes 8) dives directly into a critique of the political, the powerful, and the limits of knowledge. In this paper, we will look at authorship, setting, genre and structure for the whole of Ecclesiastes, and then move into a detailed analysis of the text-in-focus. Also, through conducting word/phrase study on וְעֹז פָּנָיו יְשֻׁנֶּא perhaps we will see more clearly what this smokiest of biblical texts has to say to us today. For pandemics, protests, misuse of power, and the exposing of frail systems once thought to be sound and secure, Qohelet, through his alternative wisdom, exposes the cracks in Divine causality and “this or that” thinking by offering a “third way” of seeing the world.
Ecclesiastes in Recent Research: Sneed, Barbour, Weeks, Robinson
ETS Northeast Region Annual Meeting, 2014
A number of important books on Ecclesiastes have appeared in recent years, including works by Sneed, Barbour, Weeks, and Robinson. The first two of these began as doctoral dissertations (which usually means a fresh approach). Sneed contributes a thoroughly sociological interpretation of Ecclesiastes, following the theories of Max Weber. Sneed locates Qoheleth as one of the retainer class. He argues that Qoheleth used pessimism as a coping mechanism and survival strategy within the oppressive socio-historical context of Ptolemaic Judah. Barbour's approach is unique because she sees historical allusions in Ecclesiastes, although not in the obvious way that others have seen the presence of some historical situations. Her major contribution is the interpretation of Ecclesiastes 12:1-7 in terms of a city lament. The thesis of Weeks' book is that Ecclesiastes cannot properly be called skeptical. A more important contribution, however, is in his innovative interpretation of several passages, including the identification of rhetorical questions, which other interpreters had always taken as statements. Robinson has done a great service to Ecclesiastes scholarship in his translation and publication of Salmon ben Yeroham's medieval commentary of Ecclesiastes (written in Arabic, using Hebrew characters). The document was previously translated only into Hebrew (in an unpublished dissertation), and Robinson has also provided critical apparatus for most of the available manuscripts. My presentation will introduce and evaluate the new ideas in these four publications on Ecclesiastes. Bibliographical data: Mark R. Sneed, The Politics of Pessimism in Ecclesiastes: A Social-Science Perspective, Ancient Israel and its Literature. Atlanta, Ga.: Society of Biblical Literature, 2012. Reviewed by Stephen J. Bennett and Charles Awasu in Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 13 (2013). Available online at: http://jhsonline.org/reviews/reviews\_new/review692.htm Jennie Barbour, The Story of Israel in the Book of Qohelet: Ecclesiastes as Cultural Memory, Oxford Theological Monographs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Reviewed by Stephen J. Bennett in Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 56/3 (2013) 603-605. Stuart Weeks, Ecclesiastes and Scepticism. LHBOTS 541. New York: T & T Clark International, 2012. Reviewed by Stephen J. Bennett in Vetus Testamentum 63/3 (2013) 510-512. Available online for subscribers at: http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/10.1163/15685330-12340011 James T. Robinson, Asceticism, Eschatology, Opposition to Philosophy: The Arabic Translation and Commentary of Salmon ben Yeroham on Qohelet (Ecclesiastes).Études sur le Judaïsme Médiéval, Tome XLV. Karaite Texts and Studies, Volume 5. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012. Reviewed by Stephen J. Bennett in Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 57/1 March, 2014 (anticipated).
QOHELET'S SOCIAL SETTING: A SOCIO-RHETORICAL READING OF ECCLESIASTES
Doctoral Dissertation, 2015
The history of interpretation of Ecclesiastes demonstrates a wide range of approaches to the book’s message. In order to contribute to this variety, the central interest of this thesis concerns the traces of the primary cultural, social, and economical domains, values, and patterns embedded in the text of Ecclesiastes, as well as the rhetorical strategies the author used to convey them to his original audience. My aim was to interpret the available data in the terms and categories of the modern reader: starting from the emic perspective embedded in Qohelet’s words, and moving to the etic perspective, hence the interpretation of the implied author’s reflections about his world. I suggest that the socio-rhetorical analysis of Ecclesiastes, aided by social scientific tools, has the potential to enhance the modern readers’ understanding and appreciation of the timeless wisdom mediated by Qohelet. The results led me to conclude that the implied author intentionally chose his words to mirror not only the social, cultural, and economic phenomena of his community, but also to convey a message through them which would instruct the readers and rationalize the complex social and cultural constructs his contemporaries had to face. The comparative study of Qohelet’s intertextuality revealed the most connections with the Hellenistic world, while the common social and cultural topics in the text revealed more of the socio-cultural context behind the text. Based on the research, my conclusion is that Qohelet was a Jewish scribe in Ptolemaic Jerusalem, who wanted not only to pass on wisdom to the next generation, but also to advise his people how to manage the challenges of governmental, economical, and social changes of Hellenism without losing their identity and the traditional values their religion required of them. Keywords: Qohelet, socio-rhetorical interpretation, socio-cultural context, texture, social sciences
Qohelet and the Marks of Modernity: Reading Ecclesiastes with Matthew Arnold and Charles Taylor
The biblical book of Ecclesiastes is often claimed as a harbinger of modernity. In this essay, I compare Ecclesiastes with two overlapping constructions of modernity, taken from Matthew Arnold and Charles Taylor, focusing especially on Taylor's motifs of inwardness, narrativity, meaninglessness, and ordinary life. I suggest that the likeness to modernity in Ecclesiastes is a complex bundle of emphases held in tension, which remains hospitable to pre-modern understandings and commitments.
Subordination and the Human Condition in Ecclesiastes
The Journal of Religion (The University of Chicago Press), 2020
Whether the scope is the canon or wisdom literature alone, Qohelet has often been designated, rightly or wrongly, as an independent voice over and against tradition, someone who is marginal or peculiar in his outlook on authority, moral order, and people's connection to the deity. 1 In the book of Ecclesiastes, an issue where these matters coincide is the motif of י ר א ת א ל ה י ם
Qohelet's Symbolic Use of Hebel
Journal of Biblical Literature, 1998
This essay argues that Qohelet employs hebel (trad. vanity) as a tensive symbol in the book of Ecclesiastes, incorporating multiple referents related to the literal sense of the term of "vapor" or "breath." The symbol thesis is distinctive in three ways: (1) it claims that hebel in Ecclesiastes is used metaphorically, yet with more than one referent; (2) it further claims that hebel also becomes a literary symbol, incorporating the individual (metaphorical) senses of the term as used throughout the book; and (3) while "insubstantiality" and "transience" are generally accepted metaphorical referents for hebel, this proposal claims there is a third, "foulness," developed by Qohelet.