Concerning the purpose and character of the book there has been much difference of opinion. Jerome who read it to Blesilla and wrote his commentary at her suggestion regarded it as intended to show the worthlessness of mundane existence and to bring home the need of an eternal life. This wastyyical of early interpre tation. Some mediaval ewish exegetes recog nized in it a serious testing of the foundations of belief and were encouraged by it to philo sophical speculation. Luther laid stress on the injunctions to a simple enjoyment of the pleasures of life in the fear of God. But the dominant note of sadness in reflecting upon the transitory and apparently profitless course of man's life and the hopelessness of any future reward could not be missed when the allegoriz ing, tendencies were discarded and the literal sense alone was sought. Hence the impression of a pervading pessimism and scepticism that appealed to Voltaire who regarded it as gun monument pricieux>> and dedicated his render ing of it in verse to Madame Pompadour and Frederic the Great to Heinrich Heine who sty' led it ((Das Hohelied der Skepsis>>; to Eduard von Hartmann Lied vom Ewigen,) 1889) who defined it as 'rein Brevier des allermodern sten Materialismus and der iussersten Blasirt and to Renan who called it gun des ouvrages des plus charmants que nous ait le es l'antiquite.>> Theologians like De Wette, bel, Umbreit, Bruch, and Plumptre emphasized its scepticism. But whatever influence of Greek philosophy or free and fearless speculation may have been felt in the book, the frequent mention of God did not seem to allow the inference that the author had lost completely his childhood's faith. The careful avoidance of the name Yahwe is indeed, as Bergst saw, a sign of a late date, but not of a diminished faith in a living God, as many of the Psalms and Daniel prove. It is important, however, to notice the character of his references to God. A certain resentment against the power of God, checking with ap parent jealousy every effort of man, has been discerned by McDonald and others. "At bottom more says Renan, "the author of Job is more audacious in his language; Qoheleth has no longer the strength to be indignant at God; it is so useless?' Kleinert observes that the thought of an immanence of the supramundane God in the world and in history, the heroic con fidence, the expectation of impending judgment, the imperishable hope, the fervent prayer, the sense of sin and the need of atonement are gone; there are no anthropomorphisms, but neither is there any breath of warm life; the conception of an inscrutable and inexorable omnipotence approaches the lifelessness of Fate.
It is true that the attitude of Ecclesiastes toward death does not differ essentially from that of his ancestors. But the question : Who knows whether the spirit of the sons of man goes upward and whether the spirit of the beast goes downward to the earth?'" seems to show that the somewhat strenuous denials of immor tality are made in view of contemporary asser tions, probably reflecting foreign speculation, that the spirit does not go down to Sheol, but up into the empyrean. The recognition of a fixed cosmic order does not lead to a discussion of the freedom of the will: good counsel is given on the assumption that, within certain limits, man can determine his own conduct. Against the conception that theoretically Ec clesiastes reaches no other conclusion than that of the essential worthlessness of existence and that, in view of this, he adopts an opportunist hedonism, Genung strongly emphasizes his scientific spirit, advancing by the inductive method in the search for truth, his restraint when confronted with theories still lacking a basis of verifiable fact, his discernment of rela tive values, and his stress upon character and recognition of the intrinsic importance of work and pleasure. There is much justice in these observations, even if at times they leave the im pression of a subtlety that discovers aims and ideas which may not have been present in the author's mind. Struck by the circumstance that in the proto-canonical books efrom Genesis to Paul)" the fall of man is not mentioned except by Ecclesiastes (vii, 29), McDonald has assigned to this doctrine, which appears to he as casually referred to, if at all, as in Ecclesiasticus xxv, 24, or Wisdom of Solomon ii, 23, 24, a larger place than seems to be warranted by the rest of the book. The value of the poetic insertions has long been recognized. In the Song of Youth and Age with which the work fitly closes, the deep sense of the desirability of life, the in trinsic worth of human existence, adds to the pathos; it touches every heart because it sings the universal fate of man; it is at once a chant of death's advance even in the midst of life and life's affirmation of its joy even in full view of death.