Book Reviews -- By: Anonymous
Journal: Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal
Volume: DBSJ 16:1 (NA 2011)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous
DBSJ 16:1 (2011) p. 113
Book Reviews
Ecclesiastes, by Craig G. Bartholomew. Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2009. 448 pp. $39.99.
Throughout its history of interpretation, Ecclesiastes has been one of the most difficult books to interpret. One issue that has made Ecclesiastes a challenge is determining its message. Does the book have a negative or positive overall message? Is Ecclesiastes about the vanity of life, or about celebrating it? While a number of leading commentators have taken the message of Ecclesiastes negatively as a foil to the other books in the canon, Craig G. Bartholomew’s commentary provides a modest contrast to a pessimistic interpretation of this book.
Bartholomew is the H. Evan Runner Professor of Philosophy and professor of religion and theology at Redeemer University College in Ontario, Canada. His qualifications for writing this commentary are unmistakably displayed in his 1999 work, Reading Ecclesiastes: Old Testament Exegesis and Hermeneutical Theory, a revised edition of his 1996 dissertation completed at the University of Bristol. The most helpful contribution of Reading Ecclesiastes is Bartholomew’s discussion of the history of interpreting Ecclesiastes. Between Reading Ecclesiastes, other books, and articles, he is particularly competent to write a commentary on Ecclesiastes.
Bartholomew provides a helpful and detailed discussion of germane introductory issues (pp. 17-99), such as the history of interpretation (pp. 21-43) and genre and literary style (pp. 61-82). The remainder of the volume is divided into the actual commentary (pp. 101-373), followed by a postscript (pp. 375-89), bibliography (pp. 391-420), and indexes referencing subjects, authors, Scripture, and other ancient writings (pp. 421-48). The commentary itself is divided into three sections: the frame narrative: prologue, 1:1-11 (pp. 101-17), Qohelet’s exploration of the meaning of life, 1:12-12:7 (pp. 119-357), and the frame narrative: epilogue, 12:8-14 (pp. 359-73). The body of the commentary (pp. 119-357) focuses on Qohelet’s exploration of the meaning of life. This is divided into twenty-one units. With each of these sections, as well as the prologue and epilogue, Bartholomew provides his own translation, followed by his interpretation of the text and its theological implications.
Bartholomew cautiously proposes that Qohelet lived in a third-century Israelite community that had been exposed to a pervasive Greek philosophy with its stress on an autonomous epistemology. The programmatic question in 1:3 (“What does man profit from all his work at which he toils under the sun?”) initiates his exploration into finding the meaning of life by using an empiricist epistemology throughout the
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