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.