Bible Study: Ecclesiastes

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For mankind, which has existed for a brief couple of million years, it may seem that things repeat over and over unceasingly and meaninglessly but the universe and even life on Earth is far more extensive and far less repetitive and, perhaps, far more meaningful and it looks very much as if mankind has run its course unless it starts really utilizing the brains it had the good fortune to develop.

Ah, but where do we have true, fundamental change? We can argue that societies change and evolve, but I don't think that the author's intent was to point to some lack of progress but rather attack the fundamental nature of mankind. Not only that, but the book of Ecclesiastes is often considered to be one that pointed to existential themes that were developed later by existentialism, the latter representing a movement that dug more into the notion of life's lack of meaning.

Well, I wouldn't say that an existential philosophy was actually intended in this chapter, as from reading it, at least from the translations that we see, it seems to be made out of an emotional response rather than being analytical. Also, it would seem to contradict the rest of the Bible in that aspect, although it could raise a question, how come this chapter is canon?

Last edited by greenblue on 13 Sep 2008, 4:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Excellent choice in topic, iamnotaparakeet.

Don't know nothing about authenticity, but the King James Version is far better as English poetry, and since Ecclesiastes is poetry, it don't make sense to settle for less than the best.

Does anybody have any good ideas about who wrote Ecclesiastes, or where it came from? Supposedly, it was written by Solomon, but it's my understanding that there was a tradition in Hebrew literature to show your respect for people you admire from the past by saying that what you consider your best work was actually written by them.

One of the Psalms of David, for example, makes reference to the Babylonian Captivity, which happened four centuries after David died.

Ecclesiastes, however, is definitely a case where the ideas are more important than the literal details of the source.

Now and then, something manages to jump across all those centuries, and I feel like the author is speaking directly to me.

I like the New Century Version of The Bible the best. It's really accurately translated and uses modern language.

I like Ecclesiastes. It's pretty Nihilistic but it has great philosophies in it.

I don't know who the author is. He only refers to himself as "Son of David". Most scholars think that Solomon was an unlikely candidate.

Is existential philosophy really analytical?? I mean, some of the works considered existential are stories and novels. Not only that, but I never said that Ecclesiastes WAS existential philosophy, only that the points, meaninglessness, and so on, are themes further developed by existential philosophy.

That is an interesting question, I think the chapter is considered unseparable from the book, and the book is considered very valuable to Christians. Often they impute from it the notion that there is no meaning outside of God, to make this book further promote a theocentric notion.

I don't have the NCV, these are the ones I have:



As for the authorship, I rather go with the traditional interpretation of verse 1 than the JEDP stuff.

^

Is there really any significant difference between those few dozen translations?

Most of them aren't English, but they say the same when properly translated. HOT (Hebrew Old Testament) and the GNT (Greek New Testament, majority text) are the most accurate though....

There were more abbreviations than I recognized, but there are quite a few, regardless of what languages they're in. You can read Greek and Hebrew? Impressive. But as you said, they all say the same thing when properly translated.

Can read Greek yet, but I can decipher Hebrew to an extent.

The Masoretic text (Hebrew Bible) is the Old Testament. For hardcopies of the New Testament, I have the majority text and the Textus Receptus, but I haven't learned to read them yet. I've read the NIV translation for my first English Bible though.

The Bibles listed above are on E-Sword and without copyright AFAIK.

How about the New World Translation?

NWT isn't listed.

Ah, that explains it. I was envisioning an entire bookshelf in iamnotaparakeet's room stuffed to bursting with several dozen Bibles.

I should go download e-sword... (goes to (Add/Remove Apps, installs gnome-sword, which is essentially the same thing)

Do you know of any other good software in this vein? There used to be an Ubuntu Christian Edition operating system with all kinds of that stuff pre-loaded, but it went under.

Well, I see the connection to existentialism though even when I thought this was seemingly of another nature, although some could make the connection to nihilism, I suppose, perhaps with the words rather than the expression. I can see my fault with existentialism, so it seems to fall into subjetivism, in a sense that would mean to be a form of existentialism an expression comming out from an emotional dilemma. Anyway, It is interesting though, to touch this part of the Bible and give it a philosophical meaning. Although I don't know what parakeet makes of this. I don't remember touching this part when I was in church.


That could be probably the case, and preachers and christians often would say that life without God is meaningless.

Last edited by greenblue on 13 Sep 2008, 7:22 pm, edited 2 times in total.

And how come it isn't included?