John 18-19 structure

There's a fascinating back and forth between inside and outside in the exchange between Pilate, Jesus and the Jewish leaders in John 18-19, but it's quite similar to what's happening in the immediately preceding section of Peter and the show trial by the Jewish leaders.

As is evident here, while Mark uses time in his Passion narrative, John is interested in location, and the contrast between what is happening inside (Jesus being the light in the darkness) with what is happening outside (the world rejecting the light). 

I'm looking forward to reflecting on this tomorrow at our Good Friday service. 

Standing on the shoulders of giants

There are three things to come together in constructing the structure I have arrived at. One is what is widely agreed: the bookends. Two is the alternating panels, as discussed earlier. Third is the structural keyword which give shape and boundaries to the sections.

1. Overall Shape
There is widespread agreement to the overall structure of the book. Simply put there is a beginning, a body, and a conclusion. The precise boundaries differ, but my delineation is not especially novel.

1.1 An opening word on Qohelet
1.2 Dilemma: Vanity of Vanities
1.3-11 Opening Poem
1.12-11.6 BODY
11.7-12.7 Closing Poem
12.8 Dilemma: Vanity of Vanities
12.9-14 A concluding word on Qohelet

In my own structure I have included the 'dilemma' with the words on Qohelet although others will separate it out. But it is worth mentioning separately here so the shaping of the book is apparent. Working from out to in, it begins and ends with a word on a Qohelet, then has the 'vanity of vanities' saying, and then a poem with a gnomic perspective (humanity in light of creation, life in light of old age). This shaping of the book's bookends indicates that structure in intrinsic to this book; we should be expecting more structure as we delve further into the book.

2. Alternating Panels
As mentioned in my previous post, this is something that others seem to have been groping towards.  Although the delineation of the passages differ, there are similarities in the way the panels are described.

Author	A Panels	B Panels
de Jong	Observation	Instruction
Seow	Reflection	Ethics
Zimmerli	Treatise	Sentence collection
d5	Observation	Wisdom collection

As suggested earlier what needs to happen next is to ground the delineation of the panels beyond 'the vibe', or de Jong's 'intuition'. Which leads to our next point.

3. Structural Keywords
A host of keywords have been suggested. Wright, among others, suggested multiple thematic keywords, which all work for a section, but only for a short section. But from closely observing the section 1.12-2.26 suggest not a thematic, but a structural keyword.

Seeing similarities in Bauckham's 'brothers and sisters' beginning sections in the book of James, or Gibson and Nichols with the refrain ‘(through) Jesus Christ (our) Lord’ at the conclusion of eight sections of the book of Romans, or even the well known reference to the progress of the word of God in the book of Acts, it is evident that these structures are not necessarily using 'thematic' keywords, that is words which one would suggest at the outset. And in a sense, that is the issue with using 'hebel' to find a structure - it is the keyword one might suggest. But that does not mean the book must use a preconceived keyword to reveal the structure.

Instead, what is evident in Ecclesiastes is the use of the verb ראה (to see) to provide structure to the 'A' panels of the book, and especially the first person qatal use of the verb, ראיתי (I saw/observed), to provide the structure to these panels.

On reflection, and again, much like the other examples, this keyword is perfectly fitting to the style and content of the book. The book is a book in large part of Qohelet's observations, the things he has seen. As one thinks about the structural keywords in James, Romans and Acts, in retrospect they too are fitting. But these are firstly structural keywords, and are revealed by the book, which is different to thematic keywords, which are imposed on the book by others.

In the next post I will show how this works to structure the book.

Recent approaches to the structure of the book of Ecclesiastes

Recent approaches to the structure of Ecclesiastes

Castellino and Wright

Perhaps disheartened by the inimitable Delitzsch, it wasn't until the 1960's that approaches to the structure of Ecclesiastes became a distinct area of study. This focus and the earlier pessimism meant anyone who wanted to assert a structure had to do more than simply state their structure; it had to be defensible. 

In the 1960's two Roman Catholic stablemates identified similar structures and were published in the same CBQ omnibus. George Castellino and Addison Wright both identified a book whose body could be divided in twain. There were questions in the first half and answers in the second. For Castellino it was the imperative שׁמר at 4.17 (5.1 English) which signalled the turning point. This was a pretty neat structure, which drew attention to some clusters of vocabulary limited to one half or the other. 

Unfortunately for him, Wright's structure blew him out of the water. It is not to say it was good, but it grabbed everyone's attention. 'The Riddle of the Sphinx' and his two follow up articles found a bunch of numerical values matching up with verses and structure and so on. He used Ben Sira to show this is what readers would be expecting - a literary work thoroughly worked through with numerical significance. 

While Wright's ideas are fantastical, the thoroughness of his work means his has been the accepted model for half a Century. Occasionally this seems to be for lack of effort (see Murphy's WBC volume which criticises Wright yet uses it nonetheless), but thankfully in the last two decades others have come up with their own approaches.

Nonetheless, these two approaches demonstrated two observations which remain valid regardless of the structure. The first of these is the idea of alternation, two different types of discourse. And the second is the importance of keywords and clustered vocabulary.

Zimmerli and de Jong

Zimmerli wrote a commentary (in German, in Fraktur script, if anyone is interested in reading it) but also an article where he considered two alternatives: Traktat (treatise) oder Sentenzensammlung (a collection of aphorisms). What seemed to be Zimmerli's issue was trying to decide which of these we should decide Ecclesiastes to be, although the question I was asking as I read his article, was 'why not both?' (with apologies to the Old El Paso advert).

De Jong followed his 'intuitions' (really, that's how he described his method) to divide the body of the book into two sets of panels, although he guided his intuitions by grouping together clusters of vocabulary. One half he called 'observation', the other 'instruction', and these sets demonstrated the two types of discourse in the book. Seow had a similar approach, although without focussing so much on the vocabulary, and had two pairs as contrasted with de Jong's four pairs.

These authors built on the slightly crazy in Wright to come up with some truly plausible structures that seek to give credence to the two types of discourse sensed as one reads - the observations of Qohelet paired with the many wisdom sayings throughout. However the question Fox asked remains: what effect does it have on the reading of the book? Most of these structures, when one actually tries to read Ecclesiastes through their filter, as Fox described Wright, amount to no more than a 'ghost in the attic'. 

There is also something to be said for the importance of keywords, as there do seem to be clusters and regularity of phrases, but so far none of the words or phrases (such as הבל hebel (vanity) or 'chasing/shepherding the wind') have really done the job. Perhaps it is not thematic keywords we should be looking for, but structural keywords. Maybe we will do just that...

Past approaches to the structure of Ecclesiastes

As mentioned in my previous post, there are three main unresolved issues in Ecclesiastes studies.

1. Author/Date/Setting
2. Tone
3. Structure

My work is focusing on the third of these, which is a journey I am embarking on because of features I have noticed as I have worked through the Hebrew text. But first it is appropriate to note the shoulders upon which I stand as I take my approach.

The history of Ecclesiastes structure research could be divided into three time periods, namely, the historic (up until the Reformation), from the Reformation until the middle of last Century, and from the 1960's until today. 

Historic

It is fair to say there was not much interest in the structure of the book before the Reformation. The book was simply read as one long monologue (see for example Gregory Thaumaturgus' 'Metaphrase') and not much thought was given to any logical units within.

Some attention of late has been given to the Masoretic markings of the text, and most notably the midpoint marker. However to read anything into this is purely speculative. After all, the Masoretes were also known as the Sopherim (those who count), so it was important to mark off the midpoint of a book so as to aid their counting, ensuring they had not missed (or added) anything in their copying.

Reformation

As Luther preached and taught through the book of Ecclesiastes he drew attention to movements he perceived in the logical argument of the book. He did not (so far as we know) devote any attention to outlining a structure, but one is deducible from his commentary (published, albeit, by his students). 

The generations after the Reformation began to think in higher-critical terms, and began to question how many hands lay behind the book, and the deduction of the different sources would reveal how the work is to be structured (much like the Documentary Hypothesis in Pentateuchal studies). Some effort was made in finding a structure, but these attempts did not lead to any optimism, with no consensus being reached. As mentioned last post, Franz Delitzsch summed up the mood with his 'never have, never will' statement, while one imaginative scholar suggested (anachronistically) that an early scribe dropped the loose-leaf sheets of the book and reassembled them in an incorrect order, which is why we will never be able to find an order (at least without some similarly imaginative reorganising).

In the next post I will take a look at more recent approaches, and will show how they coalesce into a hopeful approach.

The Background to Ecclesiastes

Ecclesiastes is one of those funny books which everyone likes, but for different and even contradictory reasons. People agree that it's great, that it's strangely contemporary, that it's a great bridge to faith for non-believers, but again, they may not agree on the reasons for saying so.

There seem to be three issues that divide interpreters of the book, and have done for quite some time:

1. Author/Date/Setting
2. Tone
3. Structure

1. Author/Date/Setting

In the past, and with even a few hangers-on today, the book has been ascribed to Solomon. It has been seen as the reflections of an old Solomon, reflecting on his folly and seeking to teach his son a different way. As such, it is viewed as a mini-collection of Proverbs and Song of Songs, although each would reflect a very different period of his life.

This opinion has largely given way to the understanding of 'Solomon' as a royal fiction, whereby the author uses the persona of Solomon for the first couple of chapters to make a point, but by-and-large dispenses with it after that point. Luther pointed this out in his Tischgespräch, although interestingly continued to refer to 'Solomon' rather than 'Qohelet' or simply 'the author' in his lectures, most likely due to the standard convention which still persists for good or ill.

However dispensing with the idea of Solomonic authorship leaves the field wide open, and the majority of modern interpreters have settled on either a Persian or Greek dating. This is usually dependent on whether one thinks the book imbibes Persian or Greek wisdom, or describes a Persian or Greek time period. 

It seems that the idea of Ecclesiastes repackaging Greek wisdom has very little to back it up these days, which would shift it a little earlier (to the Persian era) than perhaps 20 years ago. Some also see the Persian context reflected in the setting of several aphorisms in the book.

2. Tone

Jerome, back in the day, in time when asceticism was elevated (sometimes literally), saw in Ecclesiastes a Contemptus Mundi, where there was nothing good or worthy in the world, and pushed the reader toward a life of divine contemplation rather than enjoyment of this-worldly things.

In Luther a new reading was found - nun-marrying, home-brewing ex-monk that he was. Moving on from Jerome's pessimistic reading a millennium beforehand, Luther took Qohelet at his word when he extolled the wisdom of Carpe Diem. This can be seen to tie in to a strong creation theology evident throughout the book. 

In this new millennium however a third reading has been attempted, most notably by Tremper Longman III, which I have called the 'stolid evangelical approach'. Put simply, the book speaks provisionally, and even incorrectly, in light of the ultimate revelation of Jesus in the Gospels. So anything which Ecclesiastes says which is seen to contradict the clarity of the New Testament (pertaining, for example to the afterlife) supersedes what the book says. All the reader is able to trust with any certainty is the epilogue of the book, which seeks to correct any misspeaking of the author by giving it a covenantal framework: 'God shall you fear, and his commands shall you keep, for this is the duty of everyone.' (12.13)

3. Structure

I won't speak much on this now, except to say no one agrees, except perhaps with Franz Delitsch, who said a long time ago that no one has or ever will find the author's intended structure to Ecclesiastes. And yet... (stay tuned!)