In | Workbook: The Spirit of Ecclesiastes

Grab your Workbook Journal!

[Record your answers in the workbook provided at the beginning of this course.]

Like many other biblical books, Ecclesiastes has had a polarizing effect on commentators. Disagreements about this book tend to be more fundamental than we see with other books. Many commentators have debated the meaning and value of the book’s message. 

Some have viewed Ecclesiastes as the defeat of a brave thinker and a brilliant mind:

(Ecclesiastes) reminds me of the remains of a daring explorer, who has met with some terrible accident, leaving his shattered form exposed to the encroachments of all sorts of foul vermin.

Others have viewed it as a triumph of truth and realism, seeing the Teacher as someone who has conquered all falsehood and personal fears:

[Qohelet] is “disillusioned” only in the sense that he has realized that an illusion is a … prison. He is not a weary pessimist tired of life: he is a vigorous realist determined to smash his way through every locked door of repression in his mind. 

Source: Eric S. Christianson, Ecclesiastes Through the Centuries, 2012 pp. 4, 6.

Reference: Northrop Frye, The Great Code, 1982, p. 123. Paul Haupt, The Book of Ecclesiastes, 1894, p. 28.

3. Which of these two views resonates more with your own reading of Ecclesiastes? Explain.