CHAPTER VII.
ECCLESIASTES AND ITS CRITICS (FROM A PHILOLOGICAL POINT OF VIEW).
By comparison with Ecclesiastes, the books which we have
hitherto been studying may be called easy; at any rate, they
have not given rise to equally strange diversities of critical
opinion. A chapter with the above heading seems therefore
at this point specially necessary. Dr. Ginsburg's masterly
sketch of the principal theories of the critics down to 1860
dispenses me, it is true, from attempting an exhaustive survey.[1]
It is not the duty of every teacher of Old Testament
criticism to traverse the history of his subject afresh, any
more than it is that of the commentator as such to begin with
a catena of the opinions of previous writers. Suffice it to call
attention to two of the Jewish and two of the Christian expositors
mentioned by Dr. Ginsburg, viz. Mendelssohn and Luzzatto,
and Ewald and Vaihinger. Mendelssohn seems important
not so much by his results as by his historical position.
His life marks an era in Biblical study, most of all of course
among the Jews, but to some extent among Christians also.
His Hebrew commentary on Koheleth deserves specially to be
remembered, because with it in 1770 he broke ground anew
in grammatical exegesis. To him, as also to Vaihinger,
the object of Koheleth is to propound the great consolatory
truth of the immortality of the soul, while Ewald, more in
accordance with facts, describes it as being rather to combine
- ↑ For the Jewish traditions and theories, see further Schiffer, Das Buch Kohelet nach der Auffassung der Weisen des Talmud und Midrasch und der jüdischen Erklärer des Mittelalters, Theil 1, Leipzig, 1885; and to complete Dr. Ginsburg's survey of the literature, see Zöckler's list in Lange's Commentary and the additions to this in the American edition; also the preface to Wright's treatise on Ecclesiastes.
