Ecclesiastes - GA Barton - 1908.pdf

26
ECCLESIASTES
leaves, 6 8
~7 22 and 2C 9
on the fifteenth and ; sixteenth, 4 ~5 8 on ; the seven-
teenth, io 16-n 6 and 5
; on the eighteenth, 7 23 -8 5a ; on the nineteenth (end
of the third fascicle), io 2' 15 and i4 b ; on the twentieth, p 3 - 10 ; on the twenty-
first and probably the twenty-second, n 7 -i2 8 .
The string which held these fascicles together broke and the middle
fascicle fell out. The leaves were found by some one not qualified to put
them together, who took the inner half of the second fascicle, folded it
inside out, and then laid it in the new order immediately after the first
fascicle. Next came the inner sheet of the third fascicle, followed by
the outside half of the second, into the middle of which the two double
leaves, 13, 18, 14, 17 had already been inserted. Although the fourth
fascicle kept its it place, did not escape confusion, for between its leaves
the first two leaves of the remaining sheet of the third fascicle found a
place. Finally, leaf 17, becoming separated from its new environment,
found a resting place between 19 and 21. This dislocation removed
from the work all traces of its plan.
In the new form it frequently happened that some of the edges did
not join properly a fact which led in time to the insertion of glosses.
From this dislocated archetype all extant texts of Qoheleth have de-
scended.
If now the original order of the leaves be restored and the glosses re-
moved, the work falls into two distinct halves, a speculative and a practical,
each distinguished from the other by its own appropriate character-
istics. According to Bickell this first half consisted of the following:
Ch. i 1 -2 11
5 9 -6 7
3 9
~4 8 2 12b - 18 - 26 - 12a - l3 - 17 3 1 - 8 86 - 14 - 16a - 17a - I6b - 17b o 1 - 3 815 Qii-is I0 i 6 8 - 10 -i 2 . In this part it is demonstrated that life is an
empty round, and that wisdom only serves to make its possessor modest,
so that he does not get on as well as the vainly boasting fool.
Part two consisted of the following: Ch. 7 la lo 1
11. 12. 21. 2J. 20. 49-17
ct-8 IO 16-20
j^l-3.
jO 14a - 15 - 14b Q3-10 ij7-10a I2 la ijlOb I2 lb-6. 8_
7 lb -6 6 9 7 -10 - 18 -19-
7
6. 4. 5 *23-29 gl-4 JQ2-13 n!5 f(g\
In this part the advice of Qoheleth is, in view of the fact that life offers
no positive good, to make the best of such advantages as we have, to
live modestly before the ruler and before God, and to expect everything
to be vanity.
The epilogue Bickell thought was from a later hand. This
elaborate theory, rejected by most scholars, as too ingenious and
improbable, has been accepted in full by Dillon, who sought in his
Skeptics of the Old Testament, 1895, to commend it to English
readers. The theory is not only intricate and elaborate to a de-
a modern scholar
gree which creates doubts that, if it were true,
would ever have divined it, but it breaks down archaeologically
in