The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version

by Michael D. Coogan

Ancient rabbinic writings describe debates among Jewish religious leaders about Ecclesiastes. Apparently some questioned its sacred status by asking whether it, like other sacred texts, “makes the hands unclean” (see m. Yadayim 3.5). According to one rabbi, “Qohelet does not render the hands unclean because it contains only the wisdom of Solomon” (b. Meg. 7a). Others replied that Solomon spoke three thousand proverbs (1 Kings 5.12) but wrote down only a small portion of those, including Ecclesiastes, suggesting the latter's special, divine inspiration. Others questioned the book's intellectual value with expressions of discomfort about the book's contradictions. Still others challenged its moral value. The Pesikta de Rab Kahana reports that earlier sages considered suppressing the book because it might “encourage hedonism” (8.1) and “smacked of heresy” (24.14). Such debates are memories recorded at a later time, after Ecclesiastes had secured its place in the Jewish and Christian scriptures, and so might have as much to do with ongoing struggles over the book's controversial content.