Chapter OneIntroduction to EcclesiastesIt is best to be frank from the outset: Ecclesiastes is a difficult book. It is written in a form of Hebrew different from much of the remainder of the Old Testament, and it regularly challenges the reader of the original as to grammar and syntax. The interpretation even of words that occur frequently in the book is often unclear and a matter of dispute, partly because there is frequent wordplay in the course of the argument. The argument is itself complex and sometimes puzzling and has often provoked the charge of inconsistency or outright self-contradiction.When considered in the larger context of the Old Testament, Ecclesiastes stands out as an unusual book whose connection with the main stream of biblical tradition seems tenuous. There is nothing here of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; of the Exodus; of God''s special dealings with Israel in the Promised Land; or of prophetic hope in a great future. Instead we find ourselves apparently reading about the meaninglessness of life and the certainty of death, in a universe in which God is certainly present, but is distant and somewhat uninvolved. When considered in the context of the New Testament, the dissonance between Ecclesiastes and its scriptural context seems even greater, for if there is one thing that we do not find in this book, it is the joy of resurrection.

Perhaps this is one reason why Ecclesiastes is seldom read or preached in modern churches.The discomfort of the community of biblical faith with Ecclesiastes is not, however, a new phenomenon. From the very beginning it is evident that the nature of the book itself as authoritative Scripture was doubted by significant numbers of Jews. Two famous passages in the Mishnah,1 echoed in the Talmud and in later Jewish writings, refer to disputes among the rabbis on precisely this point_--_whether or not Ecclesiastes "defiles the hands." They make clear that this issue divided the famous rabbinic schools of Hillel (which thought it did defile the hands) and Shammai (which thought it did not).One of the main grounds of rabbinic difficulty clearly lay in the contradictions perceived in the book, which were felt to be unusually difficult to harmonize (e.g., 2:2 and 8:15, respectively questioning and commending Heb.

saimh=a, "pleasure, joy"; 7:3 and 9, respectively commending and criticizing Heb. ka

g., 2:24; 8:15). The author particularly commends a licentious way of life to the young (11:9).3 Our earliest commentaries on Ecclesiastes, whether Jewish or Christian, indicate just how uncomfortable such sentiments made many religious readers of the book feel, for they often avoided interpreting the text according to its plain sense when dealing with such troublesome passages, attempting to make it more "spiritual" than it otherwise appeared to them.We are dealing here, then, with an unsettling book. Ecclesiastes has a long history of perturbation behind it. What is to be done with it? We might organize a campaign to remove it from the canon of Scripture, perhaps; but such a campaign would be unlikely to succeed, given the long-standing acceptance of the book by the church universal, and we ourselves with our new, slightly slimmer canon would stand in questionable relationship to this larger church. We should also require to ask ourselves questions about our view of its Founder and his first apostles, al.