Excerpt from A Treatise on the Authorship of Ecclesiastes: To Which Is Added a Dissertation on That Which Was Spoken Through Jeremiah the Prophet, as Quoted in Matthew 27; 9-10
Such agreement between two contrary classes Of critics has given to the denial of the Solomonic authorship Of Ecclesiastes a footing Of unparalleled strength and prominence. Hence the theory that the book must have been written long after the days Of Solomon has come to be viewed in many quarters as a truth not less indisputable than the fact announced by Galileo, that the earth revolves around the sun. ‘if the Book of Koheleth were of Old Solomonic origin, ’ says Delitzsch ’then there is no history of the Hebrew language. On the Continent, ’ says Ginsburg, ‘where Biblical criticism has been cultivated to the highest degree, and where Old Testament exegesis has become an exact science, the attempt to prove that Solomon is not the author of Ecclesiastes would be viewed in the same light as adducing facts to demonstrate that the earth does not stand still.’ Yet the non-solomonic authorship thus attributed to Ecclesiastes is directly Opposed, not only to the unani mous testimony of antiquity, in so far as that testimony is extant, but also to what is expressly stated in the book itself. Unlike the Epistle to the Hebrews, which is silent as to its own authorship, Ecclesiastes, in its title, claims for its author that son of David who was king in Jerusalem. And throughout the book this pre liminary claim is unequivocally implied and asserted in various ways. Hence if the claim were fictitious, might not other claims throughout the Scriptures be the same?
The ultimate results of the criticism thus originating in the denial of the Solomonic authorship of Ecclesiastes it is not easy to estimate. ‘if the foundations be destroyed, what hath the righteous done 2’ Within the domain of ordinary literature, independent literary productions stand or fall according to their own individual merits or demerits. Hence an attack on the credibility Of one book does not necessarily affect the reputation of others. It is different, however, with the books of Holy Scripture. The trustworthiness Of the volume in general is directly affected by the impugning of the genuineness of one or more canonical books in particular; so that the question as to the authorship Of Ecclesiastes involves issues of momentous magnitude with reference to the character and credibility of the sacred record as a whole.
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