Karl: Two very brief coments.
> True, you didn’t say post-exilic. The reason I assumed that is because all > other authors that I know of argue for a post-exilic authorship, based on > the ideas presented. > > But if you admit to pre-exilic authorship, then do you not run into the > main objection cited by others that the ideas presented were common during > the Hellenistic period, but “unknown” during the pre-exilic monarchy? > I don't hold much store by such arguments - and am pretty sure you don't either! (On the other hand, I don't rule out post-exilic either.) > > What about the idea that a commoner wrote it and using the picture of > Solomon as a literary foil? The first objection I see is theological, namely > that God would not allow a book to be part of the Bible that was intended > for all times, yet be understood only by a particular people and time. It’s > bad enough that Hebrew language itself is only imperfectly understood, yet > it is well enough understood that the main ideas in Tanakh are correctly > understood. But to have a literary construct that misleads all but the > original audience is just plain out of the picture. > > As you said, the theological issues are off list. Suffice to say that I'm pretty conservative theologically, but don't feel this to be a problem in the way you do. For a start, whether you read the book as the work of King Solomon or as the work of a later writer who adopted a Solomonic literary persona makes very little difference to how you will "understand" it, in my opinion. The message really doesn't change. Regards, Stephen Shead Centro de Estudios Pastorales Santiago, Chile _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
