GEORGE ATHAS, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2020) pp 400. Hardcover. $45.23.
With Ecclesiastes,
Song of Songs, George Athas provides his own contribution to the Story of
God Bible Commentary series. Unique to this commentary is situating both
Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs in the Greek era; the introductions explain why
he believes Ecclesiastes was written under the hopelessness of the Ptolemaic
occupation in the 220s BCE, and Song of Songs under the pressures of
Hellenisation in the final days of the Seleucid occupation in the 160s BCE. The
second part in each section, “Explain the Story”, both tackles important
exegetical questions but also shows how the historical context shapes the text
and our interpretation of it.
Athas uses
the introduction of Ecclesiastes as well as the “Listen to the Story” sections
to spell out his suggestion of a Davidic descendant writing in the 220s under
Ptolemaic rule in the context of the chief priest Onias II’s misjudged
leveraging of the Seleucid kingdom and the devastating impacts that had on the
Jewish people. Athas does not suggest an identity for Qohelet beyond a
Davidic descendant, but suggests they were still aware of their royal blood
and, while they were not a king, were things to have run differently they might
well have been. They write as one who would be king according to God’s promise,
yet with no hope of being king because of circumstance. This enables them to
evaluate the foreign rulers and local leaders such as Onias and Joseph Tobias
and to point out their many failures. The book’s hebel motto thus
outweighs any provisional carpe diem statements as God has shown
himself unwilling to intervene and help his people.
The background
to Song of Songs are the actions of Jason and Menelaus, along with Antiochus’s
response in removing the special religious status of the Jews. The Solomon
character represents pressures of Hellenisation, the shepherd boy Yhwh, and the
woman Israel who desires to be loyal to Yhwh but is fighting a losing battle
against Hellenisation. This historical specificity makes for an engaging
reading of the Song as a story, situating it in a time and place of extreme
pressures, and also explains the need for oblique allusions to refer to people,
places and God. While not all interpreters will agree with this reading, Athas
has set a new standard in suggesting and demonstrating the viability of quite a
precise dating.
When it
comes to structure, I was disappointed that none of the recent advances in
Ecclesiastes studies made any impression on this book (on this, see my own Seeing
what Qohelet Saw). He makes brief mention of the frame, which Athas
believes to be late, but in agreement with Qohelet. Otherwise he has essentially
broken the book up into preaching units, suggesting instead that “[t]here is no
clear literary seam between these stages. The whole movement gives a sense of
uncontrolled, heavy descent into darkness and oblivion, capturing perfectly
Qohelet’s sense of the fate of humanity and, more particularly, the Jewish
nation.” (41) In Song of Songs he made a strong case for the different speakers
throughout, but this didn’t noticeably impact the structure; the focus remained
on the story.
Evidently
however, structure was not his concern; where this commentary breaks new ground
is its consistent application of the historical specificity. Dating
Ecclesiastes to the Ptolemaic era was foreshadowed in his 2019 Biblica
article on 4:13–16, building on Barbour’s 2012 monograph, as well as Schunck’s
1959 article which suggested that it would be natural for details of the era to
be hidden within the book. Athas demonstrates how an understanding of the key
movers of the second half of the third century BC brings much more clarity to
the otherwise ambiguous declarations and descriptions. To approach the book
with such specificity is not one taken by any major commentary series I have
yet come across, as most take the author and date to be unknowable beyond
someone some vague time period within the second temple period, and this will
be where future interaction to this book should come in response. What is
unclear is whether the jury, who have essentially decided the date cannot be
known, will be swayed to reconsider their agnosticism. That is, while this
approach to dating seems plausible, the ambiguities and lack of any explicit
referents in the text makes it doubtful whether this will be taken up beyond
being referred to as a fascinating conjecture.
When it came
to the “Live the Story” sections of Ecclesiastes, a dichotomy was drawn between
“Qohelet liv[ing] in a ‘BC’ world” (162), and us who “live in an ‘AD’ world”
(193). Now, of course this is true, but the way it was emphasised does raise
some important canonical questions of what it means to read Scripture on its
own terms. Again, this is not to say Christians cannot or should not read the
Old Testament through the lens of Jesus, but to draw a distinction in the way
Athas has diminishes the testimony of Ecclesiastes on its own. According to
this pessimistic reading, Qohelet affirms that life truly is meaningless, but
Jesus tells him he is wrong. The way Athas squares this circle is to insist
that Qohelet views the world under the sun, whereas Jesus views the world under
the heavens (under the heavens being the viewpoint only available to God);
Qohelet’s view is provisional, Jesus’ is complete. If we met Qohelet today, “we
might wish to point [him] to Jesus” (193). All that being said, this book is
unashamedly a Christian reading of Scripture, and demonstrates one way to do so
for those (probably the majority) who do read Ecclesiastes
pessimistically.
This new commentary is essential reading for anyone studying Ecclesiastes or Song of Songs as it presents and shows in practice what it looks like to read these books as from a specific time and place; Athas’s wonderful storytelling throughout reveals both Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs to be telling consistent and coherent stories. Reading this book should be an encouragement to all readers to open up Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs again and with fresh eyes.
