the strange book before us, its date would be decided. Taking into account the circumstances of the writer, we might assign it to the reign of Ptolemy IV. Philopator, when the Egyptian rule began to be calamitous for Judæa. Kleinert would place it rather in one of the early, fortunate reigns (Herzog-Plitt, xii. 173); but he forms perhaps too favourable a view of the social picture in Koheleth. Hitzig, who gives a very restricted range to Greek philosophical influence upon our book, and accepts none of Zirkel's Græcisms, fixes the date in the first year of Ptolemy V. Epiphanes. Geiger, Nöldeke, Kuenen, Tyler, and Plumptre, on various grounds, think this the most probable period,[1] and the view is endorsed by Zeller, the historian of Greek philosophy. A Maccabæan and still more a Herodian date seem to me absolutely excluded, though Zirkel and Renan have advocated the one, and Heinrich Grätz (see p. 240) the other. The book is certainly pre-Maccabæan, not merely because of a Talmudic anecdote,[2] but because of its want of religious fervour (comp. Esther) and its cosmopolitanism. The germs of the Jewish parties may be there, but only the germs. To me Hitzig's is the latest possible date; but if we must admit a vague and indirect Greek influence, should we not place the book a little earlier as suggested above? But I do not see that we must admit even a vague Greek influence. The inquiring spirit was present in the class of 'wise men' even before the Exile, and the circumstances of the later Jews were, from the Exile onwards, well fitted to exercise and develope it. Hellenic teaching was in no way necessary to an ardent but unsystematic thinker like Koheleth. The date proposed by Ewald and Delitzsch is on this and other grounds probable, and on linguistic grounds not impossible.
There are two recent treatises on the philosophical affinities of Koheleth which may be mentioned here, though
