Why Ecclesiastes?

By TED ROBERTS, the SCRIBBLER ON THE ROOF

Our Bible, our Tanach, is a surprising, sometimes shocking, book. And let’s be honest, most of us haven’t read it, cover to cover, since Sunday School days. And even then our adolescent eye wandered from the page to curly-haired Rachel Pearlman, two rows away.

Now, with a more mature eye we notice it’s a simmering stew of history, poetry, moral lessons spiced with love, martial, and adventure stories. But to this reader the strangest ingredient in the bubbling pot is the Book of Ecclesiastes – a book that conflicts and frequently overwhelms the principles expressed throughout the holy book. Eat, drink, and be merry is its theme – “’cause you ain’t gonna be here long,” it seems to say.

Wisely, it dismisses wealth as a source of happiness. Fine, an intelligent start, we get it. King Solomon, allegedly the author, a great proponent of entertainment with all of his girls, palaces, paraphernalia, and royal trappings may be no happier than Joe Israelite, who lived in a hut with his goat. Ah, the beginning of wisdom, we think. But then to the reader’s dismay the author (King Solomon, not a stay-at-home dad) snaps his fingers at life’s real treasures: knowledge, goodness, love. It is not a book to relieve your depression. “ALL IS VANITY.” Eat, drink, and be merry is suggested as the only remedy. In fact, that thought is repeated SIX times. In a bleak world that’s the only medicine the author recommends.

And as if that isn’t enough, evil is everywhere. Naked you came from your mother’s womb and naked you shall return. And there’s more. The day of your death beats the day of your birth. A lightless pit of cheerless philosophy. An unmitigated, black ode to nothingness. Weird. Why is it in the Tanach? Tradition says the school of Hillel rejected it. Get drunk? Treat yourself to the sweets of the world. That’s the best advice it can give.

Strangely, it is almost a perfect reflection of a world famous poem written by a Moslem Sufi – Omar Khayyam – a millennium or two later, “The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam”. Life is short and followed by darkness, so have a good time before the carnival closes and the lights go out. The poem was extravagantly popular during the roaring twenties. The anthem of that Devil may care generation who only thought deeply about their next whiskey and soda. The similarities between it and Ecclesiastes are such that, had the Rubaiyat been first written, you would accuse the author of Ecclesiastes of plagiarism.

Interestingly, in Ecclesiastes, at the conclusion of this hedonistic rant the author, realizing he has misrepresented Judaism, declares, “fear G-d and keep his commandments” as though that transforms his previous screeching into a prayer. Or it could be that some rabbinic editor, astonished by the book’s heresy, just glued on that final truth.