tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20782819.post2137599724903637065..comments2023-11-12T13:22:30.358+01:00Comments on andrewjshields: From Atheism to BaptismAndrew Shieldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02804655739574694901noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20782819.post-38550235001649944522006-11-15T17:34:00.000+01:002006-11-15T17:34:00.000+01:00That's Blogspot's motto, isn't it?
I like Ecclesi...That's Blogspot's motto, isn't it?<br /><br />I like Ecclesiastes. Out of all the books in the Bible, more than any other it asks, "Why are we concerned about all this?" It takes a very dour worldview: All we do is vanity. All we say is vanity. Rich men die; poor men die. There's no way we can achieve meaning in the world. The writer is very jaded. It's where we first find "There is nothing new under the sun." And he hadn't even had to flip through 500 channels of cable to find that out.<br /><br />And then the writer rescues himself, saying "except then I remembered God is the answer." But clip a few references to God, and it could just about have been written by Beckett. Linguistically, and I think philosophically, it's one of the later books in the Old Testament. But the funny thing is, tradition has Solomon writing it (Solomon is "the Preacher," which is what Ecclesiastes means), and its position is square in the middle of the Hebrew Bible, side by side with Proverbs and Song of Solomon and so on.<br /><br />Maybe the stranger thing is that the rabbis who finally set the canon decided to include it at all. It seems to undermine the rest of the body of works they collected. They had a lot to distill, and had to pick very carefully what to include and what old favorites to cut out. This was no Norton Anthology, after all: This was the word of God, and they had to decide what was definitively in, for all the ages. And they did include Ecclesiastes. I'm glad they did.<br /><br />It's also a very funny read. Whoever wrote it was pretty sick of fools.mrjumbohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00564375101442753257noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20782819.post-47479243972193984272006-11-15T15:39:00.000+01:002006-11-15T15:39:00.000+01:00"For a dream cometh through the multitude of busin..."For a dream cometh through the multitude of business; and a fool's voice is known by multitude of words." (Ecclesiastes 5:3)<br /><br />That's the King James. (No, I don't have bible verses on the tip of my tongue; I used the concordance at Bible Gateway.)<br /><br />Luther puts it quite differently:<br /><br />"Denn wo viel Sorgen ist, da kommen Träume; und wo viel Worte sind, da hört man den Narren."<br /><br />Something like "where there are many words is where one hears fools."Andrew Shieldshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02804655739574694901noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20782819.post-39865827008584264562006-11-15T03:42:00.000+01:002006-11-15T03:42:00.000+01:00I suspect my catchphrase must have been from Eccle...I suspect my catchphrase must have been from Ecclesiastes, the nihilist sheep in the Bible's family: "A fool's mouth is full with words."<br /><br />(Not sure how Luther put that.)mrjumbohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00564375101442753257noreply@blogger.com