Qoheleth: A Handbook on the Hebrew Text
2019; Eisenbrauns; Volume: 29; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.5325/bullbiblrese.29.3.0410
ISSN2576-0998
Autores Tópico(s)Linguistics and language evolution
ResumoThe book of Qoheleth, with its unique message and linguistic features, has challenged interpreters for centuries, often resulting in remarkably diverse interpretations of the whole as well as of the individual parts. Accordingly, any new means of accessing the book’s meaning is to be welcomed. Robert Holmstedt, John Cook, and Philip Marshall offer precisely this in their contribution to the Baylor Handbook on the Hebrew Bible series, utilizing “the best tools from modern linguistics” (p. viii). (As co-authors, they consistently use “we” and “our view” throughout the book.)The handbook begins with a 45-page introduction to the unique “linguistic profile” of Qoheleth, which is interspersed with a presentation of the linguistic terminology and concepts that are utilized throughout the volume to discuss the features of Qoheleth’s Hebrew. The latter is supported by a 10-page glossary of key linguistic terms, some of them quite familiar (adjective, agreement, apposition, and casus pendens) and some of them less familiar (to me, at least: clitic, dislocation, heavy noun phrase shift, and null copula clause). Positively, this work also serves as a basic primer for the modern linguistic theory that the co-authors employ in their following analysis of the text of Ecclesiastes. Negatively, readers trained with traditional syntactical categories—but unfamiliar with the authors’ linguistic categories—may need to work hard to understand even well-established interpretive claims.Although basically skeptical toward past efforts to identify a structure to the book, the authors highlight the narrator’s “intrusion” at 7:27, in effect subdividing the book into two sections, the first half reporting Qoheleth’s “experiment” and the second half drawing “more general conclusions” (p. 2). Particularly interesting is their discussion of “externally” and “internally motivated” diachronic changes in the Hebrew reflected in the book (pp. 40–45), leading to their conclusion that one can “confidently situate the language of Ecclesiastes in the early to mid-Hellenistic period” (p. 45).The major section of the handbook is the co-authors’ 264-page analysis of the Hebrew text of Qoheleth, that is, a clause-by-clause analysis of its language rather than a commentary on its contents. Some words or clauses warrant only a parsing of verbal forms or a syntactical label, while others receive a page-long discussion of features, such as hapax legomena, word order, or the specific function of a conjunction or preposition. The authors note where similar linguistic phenomena occur elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, as well as helpful explanations in key reference grammars, and they discuss and regularly quote standard commentaries and other helpful publications.The authors frequently move beyond linguistic analysis to interpretation, including making theological claims: regarding 7:12—“Qoheleth quotes a well-known proverb. . . . He counters that . . .” (p. 206); regarding 7:13—“Here he makes a statement about God’s creation with a backhanded compliment regarding God’s power. . . . And the feature of God’s work that concerns Qoheleth here is its immutability” (p. 207). Their linguistic analysis also repeatedly leads them to suggest intriguing alternatives to standard translations and interpretations. For example, they conclude that “one shepherd” in 12:11 refers to Qoheleth (p. 306) and that the opening phrase in 12:12 (“And more than they”) is a “warning against spending too much time in speculative wisdom” rather than in enjoying life (p. 307), while its closing phrase should be rendered “a work of flesh” rather than “a weariness of the flesh” (NRSV). Accordingly, they claim that the “contrast between the לב and the בשׂר is analogous to the Apostle Paul’s contrast between the flesh and the spirit (see, e.g., Rom 7:18)” (p. 308).Holmstedt and Cook frequently depart from the published interpretations of their academic mentor, Michael Fox. For example their interpretations of all three of the phrases from Eccl 12:11–12 cited in the preceding paragraph diverge from Fox’s views (JPS Torah Commentary, pp. 84–85). Their novel interpretations are not all equally persuasive (for example, that the phrase יגעת בשׂר in 12:12 is “analogous” in meaning to Rom 7:18), and they raise for me the fundamental question of the extent to which a modern linguistic approach to Biblical Hebrew should serve as a hermeneutical “trump card” for overturning numerous long-held interpretations of “the words of Qoheleth.” Their detailed—and rather technical—introductory discussion of the Hebrew features of the book makes a valuable contribution to Qoheleth studies, and, even if only a relatively small percentage of their new interpretations ultimately win acceptance within the guild, Holmstedt, Cook, and Marshall will have made a major contribution in promoting a more-accurate understanding of an often-enigmatic OT book.The detailed textual analysis is accompanied by an 11-page appendix, which gives the authors’ English translation of the book. Some noteworthy features of the translation are that they leave the words הבל and לב untranslated (the latter only when it occurs with “my”), indicate whether they are following a Kethiv or a Qere reading, and frequently add words (in parentheses) not in the Hebrew text when needed to clarify the meaning, as in 2:12b: “what the man who comes after the king (does)—(it) is (a thing) that they have already done!”The 13-page bibliography indicates that these authors not only are well-qualified to undertake this task (27 publications by Holmstedt are listed) but also have consulted a wide range of secondary sources addressing modern linguistics, Biblical Hebrew, and the interpretation of Ecclesiastes. If one is willing to wade through the linguistic jargon, there is much in this handbook to instruct and stimulate the thinking of both the student engaging Ecclesiastes for the first time and the scholar well versed in Qoheleth studies.
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