ECCLESIASTES. The name of a book which is in some ways one of the most remarkable in the Old Testa ment. It is one of the five small works called Megilloth (q.v.) or " Rolls " by the Jews. The Hebrew name is Koheleth. This is rendered Ecclesiastes by the Septua gint and Concionator by Jerome. Both of these words would give the meaning " The Preacher." The form of the Hebrew name is feminine. It might in an intensive sense (" the great orator," margin of Revised Version) be used of a person (cp. Sophereth in Nehemiah vii. 57). In chap. i., verse 1, the book is said to contain " the words of Koheleth, the son of David, king of Jerusalem." In vs. 12 the author is represented as saying " I Koheleth was king over Israel in Jerusalem." Koheleth is thus identified with Solomon. A common use of the Hebrew root (to gather or assemble) has suggested that the title is descriptive, meaning "assembly," that is to say, a collection of wise sayings. The tone of the book is pessimistic. All is vanity and sorrow (i. 2, 18; ii. 1, 11, 23; xii. 8). " There is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink " (ii. 24). " Who knoweth the spirit of man—Doth it go upwards? or the spirit of beast—Doth it go downward to the earth? " (iii. 21). "But if a man live many years, and rejoice in them all; yet let him remember the days of darkness, for they shall be many. All that cometh is vanity " (xi. 8). Yet the pessimism is by no means a pessimism of abject despair. " A living dog is better than a dead lion " (ix. 4). A young man is exhorted to remember his Creator in the days of his youth (xii. 1); and all are urged to " fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man " (xii. 13). As Prof. O. C. Whitehouse says (The Books of the Old Testament, 1910), " the reflects a period of national depression and hopelessness when the Jews were a subjugated people. It is evidently late, for the Hebrew abounds in Aramaisms and evidences of those later forms that are found in " New Hebrew " or the language of the Mishna. It cannot be much earlier than 200 B.C., and may, in fact, be even later." Ecclesiastes belongs to the third and latest division of the canonical writings, the Kethubim or Hagiographa. Its inclusion in the
Canon at all was afterwards a matter of surprise and a subject of controversy. Echoes of this controversy are found in the Mishnah (200 A.D.). In the tractate Yadaim (iii. 5), quoted by G. Wildeboer (Origin of the Canon of the Old Testament, 1895), we read : " Rabbi Judah [c. 120 A.D.] said, Canticles defiles the bands [i.e., is canonical; see CANON, OLD TESTAMENT], but Ecclesiastes is subject of controversy. Rabbi Jose [con temporary of the emperor Hadrian] said, Ecclesiastes does not defile the bands, and Canticles is subject of controversy. Rabbi Simeon said, The school of Sham mai was laser as to Ecclesiastes than the school of Hine]. Rabbi Simeon ben Azzai said, A tradition has been delivered to me from the lips of the seventy-two elders, on the day when R. Eleazar ben Azariah was raised to the presidency [of the Academy], that Canticles and Ecclesiastes defile the hands. Rabbi Akiba said: God forbid! No one in Israel ever contended that Can ticles does not defile the hands! For the whole world together is not to be compared to the day on which Can ticles was given to Israel; for all Kethubim are holy, but Canticles is most holy. If there was ever any con troversy it was solely about Ecclesiastes. Rabbi Johanan ben Joshua, the son of R. Akiba's father-in law, said : As [Simeon] ben Azzai reports, such was the controversy, and such was the decision." In Shabbath (fol. 30b) it is said : " The learned intended to withdraw the book Koheleth; but gave up the intention on account of the beginning and end of the book." These doubts about the book were known to Jerome and other Christian scholars. The book owes its inclusion in the Canon largely no doubt to the fact that it professes to have been written by King Solomon. Two of the essential qualifications for admittance seem to have been (1) com position in Hebrew or Aramaic and (2) by a famous person of ancient times. See G. A. Barton, Eccle siastes; G. Currie Martin, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon (" Cemtnry Bible").