At the very beginning of our class, we said that no one knows for sure who קהלת was, but we think it was שלמה המלך בו דוד, and we have run on that assumption ever since. I was looking around to see if there were any convincing arguments that it could really be someone else.
I didn't really expect that I would find a convincing argument considering how much evidence that points to שלמה being the author, but I found something interesting by someone named Jedley Manimtim at https://voices.yahoo.com/who-really-wrote-ecclesiastes-3694932.html. He notes that a possible explanation to support the idea that שלמה wrote קהלת is that even though שלמה had a bad period, he did real תשובה in the end, and then wrote קהלת. Manimtim counters, however, that in the history that we know of שלמה at the very end of his life in מלכים א, Hashem is very angry at שלמה for turning away from Him. If שלמה had repented in the end and become great enough to write a whole new book which would become so important, why would that not be included in the history of his life? "שלמה turns away from Hashem, and Hashem is angry, but שלמה does תשובה and goes on to write a whole new book that later becomes very important to תנך?" Wouldn't that be significant enough to include in the record of his life?
Whether or not שלמה really wrote/compiled the book of קהלת or not, I thought this was just something interesting to think about.
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Who wrote it?
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I think it's really interesting that Shlomo would have written a book and not put his name on it.. don't people usually want to get praise and credit from their work?!
ReplyDeleteI think your point about 'wouldn't that be significant enough to include in the record of his life' is a good point, but maybe think about why he wouldn't want to. Even though he did Teshuva, he still did bad things. Maybe writing the book and reflecting on his deeds was a part of his teshuva process?
I think I understand what you mean by saying that writing the book and reflecting could be part of his teshuva, but I don't understand why that would mean he wouldn't want to include it. The record of his life already ends in a bad way. Why would he not want to make it better, no matter how he put it on the record? It's not like being recognized for this book would be bad for him. It would show that he did do teshuva, instead of just dying and being far from Hashem.
DeleteAlso, do you think Shlomo would get to decide what would be recorded about him in regard to his spirituality? If he could, don't you think he would leave off some of the bad stuff instead of the thing that makes him look good? And if he couldn't, why wouldn't whoever recorded it include it?