012
Dialogues with Kohelet: The Book of Ecclesiastes
T.A. Perry, translator and commentator
(Penn State Press, 1993), 225pp., $25.
Perry has written widely on the literature of the Jews in Spain, but has more recently turned his attention to the biblical Wisdom texts. Here he defends an intriguing hypothesis regarding the structure and message of Ecclesiastes. As the title indicates, Perry views the book as a set of dialogues between Kohelet (the preacher) and someone whom he calls the Presenter. It is unlikely that everything said in Ecclesiastes comes from one voice, since it usually offers two opinions on a subject. Kohelet presents himself, in Perry’s words, as “King (Solomon?), wealthy entrepreneur, anti-sage (and, thus, sage), teacher, pessimist, autobiographer, essayist, and perhaps traversing them all: collector.” The Presenter preserves Kohelet’s words but responds to and challenges the points he makes. The major implication that the resigned, pessimistic statements of the book, such as “vanity of vanities, all vanity,” are set out as an option, an arguable position; but they are now placed within the context of rejoinders and counterexamples. Perry’s commentary is brief, with frequent acknowledgments of his dependence on standard modern commentaries. He also includes material drawn from the classical Hebrew sources. Readers may at times dispute which voice—Kohelet or the Presenter—is speaking, but Perry offers a creative, appealing explanation of an enigmatic biblical book.
Josephus and the New Testament
Steve Mason
(Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1992), 248 pp., $9.95.
Steve Mason of York University is well known to those who study Josephus for his weighty tome Flavius Josephus on the Pharisees (1991), demonstrating his comprehensive knowledge of the first-century A.D. historian’s writings and the scholarship on them. Here he turns his attention more directly to how one should use Josephus to help clarify the New Testament. He first offers “The Use and Abuse of Josephus,” in which he sketches how the perennially controversial historian has been used by Jews and Christians through the centuries. He is concerned that the reader take Josephus, as he says, “on his own terms” and his books for what he meant them to be, not for something he never intended (such as background for the New Testament). After dealing with the career and writings of Josephus, Mason turns to “Who’s Who in the New Testament World?” (treating several groups, such as the high priests), “Early Christian Figures Mentioned by Josephus” (John the Baptist, Jesus, James) and “Josephus and Luke-Acts” (Luke probably knew Josephus’ writings). A conclusion summarizes “The Significance of Josephus for New Testament Study.” Mason does not pretend to handle all the topics treated in Josephus and the New Testament; as he puts it, he aims only to write a travel guide to the subject. He keeps the footnotes to a minimum, but adds a section called “For Further Reading” to each of the chapters. Mason’s book can be highly commended as a relatively compact and eminently readable treatment by one of the leading scholars in the field.
Dialogues with Kohelet: The Book of Ecclesiastes
T.A. Perry, translator and commentator
(Penn State Press, 1993), 225pp., $25.
