The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur Part 6

Professor Bickell puts the matter very lucidly in his short but comprehensive introduction to the poem: "As long as Job, solicitous for his understanding, demanded an explanation of his unutterable suffering, whereby the mysterious, piteous condition of mankind is shadowed forth, his seeking was vain, and he ran the risk of loosing himself in the problems of eternal justice, the worth of upright living, and even the existence of G.o.d; for an unjust, ruthless, almighty being is no G.o.d. But by means of the theophany--which is to be understood merely as a process in his own heart, and which clearly shows him the impotence of feeble man to unravel the world-enigmas--he attains to insight; not, indeed, of a positive kind such as a knowledge of the ways of G.o.d would confer, but negative insight by means of that resignation which flows from excess of pain. It is thus that his own heroic saying is fulfilled about the reaction of unmerited suffering upon the just man."[69]

"But the righteous holds on his way, And the clean-handed waxeth ever stronger."[70]

Footnotes:

[51] The prologue is contained in chaps. i.-ii.; the epilogue in chap.

xlii. 7-17 of our English Bibles.

[52] Strophe x.x.xv.

[53] Strophe lii.

[54] Psa. viii. 4, 5.

[55] Strophe liii.

[56] Strophe lxv.

[57] Strophe lxix.

[58] Strophe lxxi.

[59] Strophe lxxiii.

[60] Strophe lxxiv-lxxviii.

[61] Strophe cxv. _Cf_. strophe clxix., where he dares his friend to prove him guilty of blasphemy when he is merely giving expression to the truth:

"If indeed ye will glorify yourselves above me, And prove me guilty of blasphemy; Know, then, that G.o.d hath wronged me!"

[62] Strophe ccxvii.

[63] Strophe ccx.x.x.

[64] As Professor Bickell rightly remarks: "At bottom what Job means is, that G.o.d alone knows the meaning of our sorrowful existence, if, indeed, He does know it" ("Das Buch Job," p. 5).

[65] Strophe cclxxvi.

[66] The mere circ.u.mstance that the Deity is no longer called by His usual name when He appears in the whirlwind is of itself an indication that the poet was not alluding to G.o.d.

[67] Strophe ccx.x.xiv.

[68] Strophe cccix.

[69] _Cf._ Bickell, _op. cit._ pp. 8-9.

[70] Strophe clvi.

KOHELETH

[Greek: Archaen men mae phynai epichthonioisin ariston Maed' eisidein augas oxeos aeeliou. Phynta d'hopos okista pylas Aidao peraesai, Kai keisthai pollaen gaen epamaesamenon.]

Theognis.

CONDITION OF THE TEXT

Of all the books of the Old Testament, not excepting the Song of Songs, none offers such rich materials to the historian of philosophy or such knotty problems to the philological critic as Koheleth[70] or Ecclesiastes. This interesting treatise is, in its commonly received shape, little more than a tissue of loose disjointed aphorisms and contradictory theses concerning the highest problems of ethics and metaphysics. The form of the work is characterised by an utter lack of plan; the matter by almost impenetrable obscurity. So completely entangled are the various threads of thought, that few commentators or critics possessed the needful degree of hope and courage to set about unravelling them. One paragraph, for instance, is saturated with Buddhistic pessimism; another breathes a spirit of religious resignation, of almost hearty hopefulness; this sentence lays down a universal principle which is absolutely denied by the next; the thesis is followed by proofs, in the very midst of which lurks the ant.i.thesis; a series of profound remarks upon one subject is suddenly interrupted by bald statements about another, the irrelevancy of which is suggestive of the ravings of a delirious fever patient. Thus one verse begins[71] by recommending men to make the most of their youth by following the bent of their inclinations and the desire of their eyes, such enjoyment being a gift of G.o.d,[72] and finishes by threatening all who act upon the advice with condign punishment to be ultimately dealt out by G.o.d Himself; and the very next verse proceeds to draw the logical conclusion, which oddly enough, runs thus: "_therefore_ drive sorrow from thy heart, and put away evil from thy flesh." In one place[73] the writer solemnly and sadly affirms that the destiny of the upright and the wicked, the wise and the foolish is wholly alike; in another[74] he seems to proclaim that the unrighteous shall suffer for their evil-doing, while the G.o.d-fearing shall be rewarded with long life, which again he stoutly denies shortly before and immediately afterwards. It is impossible to read chap. ii. 11 and 12 without coming to the conclusion that we either have to do with the incoherent ravings of a disordered mind, or else that the leaves of the original ma.n.u.script were dislocated and then put together haphazard.[75] The "for" that connects the seventh and eighth verses of chapter vi. is forcibly suggestive of the line of argument which made Tenterden Steeple the cause of Goodwin Sands, while the nexus between the sixth and seventh verses of chapter xi. is scarcely more obvious than that which is to be found between any two of the nonsense verses that amuse intelligent children in "Alice in Wonderland." And yet this production, in its present chaotic condition, has been, and is still, gravely attributed to the pen of King Solomon in his character as the ideal sage of humanity![76]

Footnotes:

[70] The most satisfactory translation of the word Koheleth is, the Speaker. "Preacher" conveys a modern and incorrect notion.

[71] xi. 9.

[72] ii. 24.

[73] ix. 2.

[74] viii. 12, 13.

[75] The verses in question are: "11. Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all _was_ vanity and vexation of spirit, and _there was_ no profit under the sun. 12. And I turned myself to behold wisdom, and madness, and folly: for what _can_ the man _do_ that cometh after the king _even_ that which hath been already done."

[76] Only, however, by the strictest of orthodox theologians, who admiringly attribute to the Holy Spirit a hopeless confusion of ideas which they would resent as insulting if predicated of themselves. As a matter of historic fact, Solomon, so far from meriting his reputation as a philosopher, was a rough-and-ready kinglet, who ruled his subjects with a rod of iron and ground them down with intolerable burdens.

PRIMITIVE FORM OF THE BOOK

The desperate efforts of professional theologians to smooth away, explain, and reconcile all these incoherences and contradictions, const.i.tute one of the most marvellous exhibitions of mental acrobatics recorded even in the history of hermeneutics. Many of these exegetes set out on the a.s.sumption that a revelation vouchsafed to Solomon could not possibly embody any statement incompatible with the truths of Christianity which emanate from the same eternal source; and they all firmly held that at the very least it must be in harmony with the fundamental dogmas common to Judaism and the teachings of Christ. In reality, what this generous hypothesis came to, whenever there was no question of text criticism involved, was a subst.i.tution of the human ideal for the divine execution. The best accredited contemporary theologians however, Catholic and non-Catholic, have insight enough to descry the stamp of true inspiration in a book which enshrines some of the highest truths laid down in the Sermon on the Mount combined with a good deal that obviously clashes with theological dogmas formulated at a much later date for the behoof of a very different social organism. In any case the original work, as it appears to have issued from the hand of "Koheleth," was composed in a spirit as conducive to true morality as the sublime eloquence of Isaiah or the absolute resignation of the author of the 73rd Psalm. Critics who succeeded in satisfactorily solving many of the philological, philosophical, and historical problems suggested by Koheleth utterly failed to find therein any traces of an intelligible plan. It was reserved to Professor Bickell, of Vienna, to point out what seem to be the true lines on which alone it is possible to arrive at a solution alike satisfactory to the reader and respectful to the author.

His theory[77]--it is, and it can be no more than a theory--which has already received the adhesion of some of the most authoritative Bible scholars on the Continent, may be briefly summed up as follows: The present disordered condition of the book, Koheleth, is the result of the s.h.i.+fting of the sheets of the Hebrew ma.n.u.script from their original places and of the addition of a number of deliberate interpolations. The latter are of two kinds: those which seemed necessary for the purpose of supplying the cement required to join together the unconnected verses which, in consequence of the dislocation, were unexpectedly placed side by side, and the pa.s.sages composed with the object of toning down, or serving as a counterpoise to the very unorthodox views of the writer.

Professor Bickell's a.s.sumption involves no inherent improbability, runs counter to no ascertained facts, and is therefore perfectly tenable. What it supposes to have occurred to Koheleth has, in fact, often happened to other works, religious and profane. It can be conclusively shown, for instance, that certain leaves of the Book of Ecclesiasticus dropped, in like manner, from the Greek Codex, whereby three chapters were transposed from their original places; for the Latin and Syriac versions, which were made before the accident, still exhibit the original and only intelligible arrangement. An old Syriac ma.n.u.script of the poems of Isaac of Antioch, now in the Vatican Library, suffered considerably from a similar mishap, and various other cases in point have come under the notice of orientalists and archaeologists.[78] In the present instance, what is believed to have taken place is this. The Hebrew Codex, of which no translation had as yet been made, consisted of a series of fascicules, each one of which contained four sheets once folded, or four double leaves, the average number of characters on each single leaf amounting to about 525.[79] The Codex, which most probably included other treatises preceding and following Koheleth, possessed an unknown number of fascicules, Koheleth beginning on the sixth leaf of one and ending on the third of the fourth following. According to the hypothesis we are considering, the middle fascicules becoming loose, fell out of the Codex, and were found by some one who was utterly unqualified to replace them in position. This person took the inner half of the second,[80] folded it inside out, and then laid it in the new order[81] immediately after the first fascicule. Next came the inner sheet of the third fascicule,[82]

followed by the outside half of the second,[83] in the middle of which the two double leaves, 13, 18, and 14, 17, had already been inserted.[84]

Although the fourth fascicule had kept its place, it was not on this account preserved from the effects of the confusing changes caused by the loosening of the ligature, for between its two first leaves the remaining sheet of the third fascicule[85] found a place. Finally, leaf 17 becoming separated from its new environment, found a definite resting-place between 19 and 21.[86] The result of this dislocation was the utter disappearance of all trace of plan in the work, the incoherences of which would be still more numerous and glaring, had it not been for the transitional words and phrases that were soon after interpolated for the purpose of welding together pa.s.sages that were never intended to dovetail.[87]

Such is the ingenious theory. The degree of probability attaching to it depends partly on the weight of corroborative evidence to be found in the book itself, and partly on the completeness with which it explains the many difficulties which the traditionalist view could but formulate.

Thoroughly to sift and weigh this evidence, much of which is of a purely philological character, would require a book to itself; but it will not be amiss to give one or two instances of the nature of the arguments relied upon.

Chap. x. 1, in the present text, is wholly corrupt, owing to the circ.u.mstance that several interpolations were inserted in it at a later date. Now a little reflection suffices to show that these additions consist of words taken from chap. vii. 1. But if the book had been composed as it now stands, such a transposition would be practically impossible, because chap. x. is separated from chap. vii. by too great an interval. In the original sequence, however, which Prof. Bickell's theory supposes and restores, there was no difficulty. There the leaf ix. 11-x.