Nearly a century ago, the German scholar Hubert Grimme NOTICED some startling similarities between the biblical Book of Ecclesiastes and the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh. This was indeed strange. Ecclesiastes, most scholars agree, dates to the second half of the third century B.C.E. and was written by a sophisticated Jerusalemite intellectual. On its face the book is a rather remarkable collection of Israelite Wisdom literature—aphoristic, skeptical, even hedonistic.1 The Gilgamesh epic, on the other hand, is a long Mesopotamian narrative masterpiece, fragments of which have survived in a Sumerian version from as early as the beginning of the second millennium B.C.E., as well as in later Akkadian and Babylonian editions and even Hittite and Hurrian versions. Any similarities between Ecclesiastes and the Gilgamesh epic would be surprising.
But there they were! Shortly after the Old Babylonian version of the Gilgamesh epic was published, Grimme noted the strong resemblance between the advice given by Shiduri, the tavern keeper, to Gilgamesh and the advice directed at the reader by 024Qoheleth, literally “the Preacher,” who purports to be the author of Ecclesiastes.2
Gilgamesh:
But you, Gilgamesh, let your belly be full, enjoy yourself always by day and by night! Make merry each day, dance and play day and night! Let your clothes be clean, let your head be washed, may you bathe in water! Gaze on the child who holds your hand, let your wife enjoy your repeated embrace.3
Ecclesiastes:
Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has already approved of what you do. Let your garments be always white; let not oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love.
9:7–9 (Revised Standard Version)
Grimme was so struck by the parallel that he could think only of literary borrowing. Since this meant that Qoheleth had to be familiar with the Mesopotamian epic, Grimme advanced the hypothesis that the Preacher lived, at least for a time, in Mesopotamia. The Judahite king Jehoiachin, who was deported to Babylonia after the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E., seemed a possible candidate for the author identified only as “son of David,” interpreted as meaning “in the line of David.” Although few scholars agreed on Jehoiachin’s authorship of Ecclesiastes, they did follow Grimme in recognizing the close parallels between the two texts.4
As more fragments of the Gilgamesh epic came to light, other parallels were discovered. In 1920 a cuneiform tablet from the Yale Babylonian Collection containing the following lines was published:
Who is there, my friend, can climb to the sky? Only the gods dwell forever with the Sun-god. As for man, his days are numbered, whatever he may do, it is but wind.5
Commentators noted the similarity with the observation in Ecclesiastes 5:2 (5:1 in Hebrew) that “God is in heaven and you upon earth.”
More significantly, however, they drew the parallel between “wind” (sðaµru) as a metaphor in the Gilgamesh epic for all human effort and Qoheleth’s misgivings about all human toil being vanity and “striving after wind,” a metaphor that appears several times in Ecclesiastes. For example, Ecclesiastes 5:16 asks, “What gain do they have from striving after wind?” (see also Ecclesiastes 1:6, 14, 17, 2:11, 17, 26, etc.).
In 1967 another parallel was added to the list, this time from the Sumerian version. The parallel is quite precise—a reference to the strength of a triple cord. The Gilgamesh epic recites a traditional saying: “The towed boat will not sink, a tow-rope of three strands shall not be cut.” Here is the parallel, from Ecclesiastes 4:12: “A threefold cord is not easily cut.”6 As it turned out, the saying also occurs in later versions of Gilgamesh.
In addition, several biblical scholars argued that Ecclesiastes displays a thematic parallelism with the Gilgamesh epic.7 They note that both Gilgamesh and Qoheleth deal with the meaning (or meaninglessness) of life in the face of death. The answer that both works hold out to their readers is quite similar: They stress the importance of fame (a name that endures) and, ultimately, recommend a life that makes the most of the present moment. Acceptance of human limitations is presented as an incentive for a moderate—and rather bourgeois—hedonism.8
Other scholars noted that the literary genres were also similar, if not identical. The Gilgamesh epic is what scholars call a fictional royal autobiography, known in Akkadian as a narû, meaning an “inscribed (royal) stele.”9 Ecclesiastes, too, can be understood as a fictional autobiographical account of a famous king who offers sapiential observations on life and death.10 Or so it was argued.
The reader may suppose that I am now going to conclude that Ecclesiastes shows a clear literary dependence on the Gilgamesh epic. But before jumping to conclusions, we need to explore whether there are more parallels from other cultures that should be considered—specifically, parallels from Egyptian and Greek literature.
026
The item of Egyptian Wisdom literaturea most frequently advanced as a parallel to Ecclesiastes is the advice to enjoy the present because death is inevitable and the rewards of the afterlife are uncertain. Its most eloquent formulation is in the so-called Harper’s Song, dating to the third millennium B.C.E.:
Follow your heart as long as you live! Put myrrh on your head, Dress in fine linen, Anoint yourself with oils fit for a god. Heap up your joys, Let your heart not sink! Follow your heart and your happiness, Do your things on earth as your heart commands! …Wailing saves no man from the pit!11
Although Ecclesiastes’ command to eat, drink and be merry (9:7–9), already quoted, is closer to the counsel of tavern keeper Shiduri in the Gilgamesh epic, the tenor of the Egyptian text is unmistakably the same.
Less known, but perhaps more significant, are the parallels between Ecclesiastes and two Egyptian texts that are much closer in time to the biblical text. These Egyptian texts, known as the Instructions of Ankhsheshonq and the Papyrus Insinger, date from the Ptolemaic period (third century B.C.E.) and are collections of counsels and proverbs, written in the cosmopolitan milieu of Hellenistic Egypt. Like Ecclesiastes, both Egyptian texts emphasize that human happiness depends entirely on a god’s decisions: “It is the god who gives wealth and poverty according to that which he has decreed; the fate and the fortune that come, it is the god who determines them.”12 Or, as Ankhsheshonq puts it, “All good fortune is from the hand of the god.”13 Humankind cannot penetrate the designs of the god, for “he lets the destiny of those on earth be hidden from them, so as to be unknown.”14
At times, the Egyptian texts contain almost literal parallels to Ecclesiastes. Thus Qoheleth’s advice to “cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it 027after many days” (Ecclesiastes 11:1) is similar to Ankhsheshonq 19.10: “Do a good deed and throw it in the water; when it dries, you will find it.” Acts of kindness, in other words, will eventually meet with a reward. And the saying of Ecclesiastes 10:9, “He who quarries stones is hurt by them,” is echoed in Ankhsheshonq’s “He who shakes the stone will have it fall on his foot.”15 The genre of Qoheleth as a royal autobiography, too, is often supposed to imitate an Egyptian model. As one prominent scholar has noted, “Qoheleth’s lucubrations have much in common…with the genre of royal testament, familiar in Egypt.”16 Such royal testaments take the form of instructions given by a king or royal dignitary to his son.17 Ecclesiastes, of course, begins with a superscript (falsely) attributing the composition to Solomon, son of David: “The words of the Preacher (Qoheleth), the son of David, king in Jerusalem” (Ecclesiastes 1:1).
After enumerating the parallels with Egyptian Wisdom literature, French scholar Paul Humbert concludes that the author of Ecclesiastes must have spent a considerable amount of time in Egypt.18 Some commentaries have taken the suggestion seriously enough to suggest that Alexandria may have been the place where the Book of Ecclesiastes first saw the light of day.19
But before we sign up for a ticket to Alexandria, or even Egypt, let us look for parallels in Greek literature. As early as the 17th century, scholars claimed to have heard Greek voices in Qoheleth’s text.20 In a detailed search for parallels with Greek literature, Rainer Braun finds analogies in expressions and ideas for half of the verses of Ecclesiastes. He concludes that Qoheleth was not only familiar with the Greek philosophy of his time, but that he adopted Greek ideas and doctrines and couched them in Hebrew.21 The work is that of a Jew imbued with Greek culture.
The famous catalogue of seasons (Ecclesiastes 3:1–8) is said to have Greek analogs:
For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.
One scholar sees in this the philosophy of Heraclitus (545–480 B.C.E.), who emphasized that life is an ever-moving stream of contradictory 029experiences.22 Another finds here an echo of the Stoic doctrine of good timing (eukaireia).23
Ecclesiastes relates the notion of a “proper time” (lakol zeman v‘et in Hebrew) to the concept of fate (miqreh). Harvard’s Peter Machinist describes these concepts as belonging to the semantic field he calls “patterned time.”24 Both concepts play a prominent role in the biblical book. We have already quoted the catalogue of seasons. Here are a few examples of the inevitability of fate:
The wise have eyes in their head, but fools walk in darkness. Yet I perceived that the same fate befalls all of them.
Ecclesiastes 2:14
The fate of humans and the fate of animals is the same; as one dies, so dies the other…all is vanity.
Ecclesiastes 3:19
The way in which Qoheleth sees fate as the one unavoidable destiny for everything alive has often been connected with the way the Greek philosophers use this concept.25
How are we to evaluate these various claims? Two pitfalls must be avoided: We must reject the narrow vision that sees but one source of influence in Ecclesiastes. And we must reject the blurred vision by which distinct traditions are seen as one abstract whole. In other words, we must not focus exclusively on Mesopotamian, Egyptian or Greek influences. Nor should we say that the various influences “cancel each other out” and are simply “common ideas of the ancient world.”26 Instead, we must sort out the threads that link Ecclesiastes to distinct traditions in an effort to reconstruct the author’s intellectual milieu and the sources of his thought.
As for Mesopotamian influence, there are only two passages that go back, in one way or another, to Mesopotamian Wisdom traditions. The first is the carpe diem (“Seize the day”) advice, exemplified in Ecclesiastes 9:7–9 and quoted at the beginning of this article (“Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart…Enjoy life with the wife whom you love”). While it is true that this has verbal correspondences that appear to go back to the tavern keeper’s advice in the Gilgamesh epic, it also has its analog in the Egyptian Harper’s Song.
The second passage, describing the three-ply rope as a symbol of strength, provides a much closer parallel and thus is far more intriguing. It is unique to the Mesopotamian Wisdom tradition and Ecclesiastes. The correspondence is too specific to be fortuitous. By contrast, Qoheleth’s use of the metaphor of the wind to denote the impermanency of human accomplishments does not require Mesopotamian influence. It is too common.27 Reflections on human mortality, the value of friendship, the advantage of wisdom over folly—these themes are the bread and butter of the sage all over the ancient Near East.
What of the similarity of genre between Ecclesiastes and the Mesopotamian fictional royal autobiography? Upon closer inspection, the comparison evaporates. At most, the autobiographical elements of Ecclesiastes are limited to the first chapters. Even here, what we have is not autobiography, but a king meditating on the futility of life as he experienced it. After that, there is not even an autobiographical thread. More importantly, in the Mesopotamian texts the moral is predicated upon a story; in Ecclesiastes, the text is all moral and no story. We are worlds removed from the adventures of Gilgamesh.
The resemblances between Ecclesiastes and late Egyptian Wisdom literature are even less compelling. 030The only convincing parallel is between “cast your bread on the waters” (Ecclesiastes 11:1) and “do a good deed and throw it in the water” (Ankhsheshonq 19.10). The biblical advice does remain mysterious without knowledge of its Egyptian background; the comparison shows that Qoheleth means to say that in due course acts of kindness (“bread” as a symbol of almsgiving) will bring kindness in return. Apart from this one parallel, there is little in Ecclesiastes that can be pinpointed as specifically Egyptian.
The Greek connection differs fundamentally from the alleged Mesopotamian and Egyptian influence. On a literary level, there are no convincing parallels. The correspondence is not one of terminology, but one of attitude and type of thought. Qoheleth is far removed from, say, Philo, but he owes an unmistakable debt to the spirit of Greek popular philosophy. His use of the notion of fate (miqreh) is illustrative. The term is not new, but Qoheleth gives it a twist by which it enters the register of a more abstract philosophical vocabulary. The impetus for this, I believe, originated in Qoheleth’s encounter with Greek philosophical traditions. The spirit that pervades Qoheleth’s work grew out of his contact with the Greek legacy. The influence of Greece, then, reaches deeper than does the influence of Mesopotamian and Egyptian Wisdom literature. From the latter traditions, Qoheleth borrowed two or three felicitous images and formulations; these, however, did not bring anything new to his thought. If his work is innovative, it is because it integrates an element hitherto absent from the ancient Near Eastern Wisdom traditions. That element is, in origin, Greek.
It remains, however, to inquire how Qoheleth came to know those snippets of Mesopotamian literature and Egyptian literature that he did incorporate into his text, however limited they might be: the details of the carpe diem advice and the image of the three-ply rope, in the case of Gilgamesh; and the background of the metaphor of casting bread upon the waters, in the case of Egyptian literature.
How could a third-century B.C.E. Jewish intellectual from Jerusalem know of Gilgamesh? True, a cuneiform fragment of the epic was found at Megiddo, but it dates to the Late Bronze Age, about a millennium before Ecclesiastes. Further, there is no trace of a translation of the epic into Aramaic, Greek or Egyptian. If Qoheleth, living in Hellenistic Palestine, knew Gilgamesh, it could only have been from hearsay. Yet a knowledge of “the broad outline” of the epic28 would not have yielded the detailed correspondence between Qoheleth’s carpe diem advice and triple-cord image and their counterparts in Gilgamesh. These two details must have reached Qoheleth independently. They were very probably traditional sayings, incorporated in the epic, that circulated in other contexts as well. But Qoheleth had no direct access to the literary tradition of Mesopotamia.
What about the Egyptian source for understanding the metaphor of casting bread upon the waters? Although it is very unlikely that Qoheleth knew Egyptian, this was hardly necessary for a third-century B.C.E. Jewish intellectual to have some knowledge of Egyptian Wisdom traditions. Judah was under Ptolemaic rule. Wisdom was one of the major branches of scholarship in the ancient Near East. It had long been open to insights from abroad. Qoheleth’s borrowing of Egyptian Wisdom is not the only example from the Hebrew Bible. Another well-known case is the similarity between Proverbs 22:17—24:22 and the Egyptian text known as the Instructions of Amenemope (see the sidebar to this article). The Egyptian text from which Qoheleth borrowed, the Instruction of Ankhsheshonq, is from the Ptolemaic age, more or less contemporary with Ecclesiastes. So it is hardly a stretch to find a Jewish intellectual like Qoheleth adopting a saying of Egyptian origin.
The Greek influence is easier to document. It was through the channel of Ptolemaic Egypt that the intellectual elite of third-century B.C.E. Jerusalem were exposed to the spirit of Greek popular philosophy. Collections of sayings of Greek philosophers circulated widely in Greco-Roman Egypt.29 Hellenistic themes and concerns also made their way into the literature of Ptolemaic Egypt. It was presumably through the intermediary of Ptolemaic Egypt that Qoheleth also knew the two Mesopotamian sayings he used in his work. Miriam Lichtheim has shown that Egyptian intellectuals of the Ptolemaic era had access to a number of Mesopotamian Wisdom collections.30
In sum, Qoheleth’s single debt to the Mesopotamian legacy is the eclectic use of two traditional sayings that reached Jerusalem from Egypt. Open to the scholarly currents of Hellenistic Egypt, Jerusalem was by no means a parochial religious enclave. On the whole, Ecclesiastes represents a new approach to the traditional doctrines of Israelite Wisdom, reflecting a bold and open mind rethinking the Wisdom tradition of Israel in a spirit that betrays the incipient influence of Greek thought. The occasional incorporation of sayings from Egypt and Mesopotamia merely testifies to Qoheleth’s cosmopolitan outlook.
Nearly a century ago, the German scholar Hubert Grimme NOTICED some startling similarities between the biblical Book of Ecclesiastes and the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh. This was indeed strange. Ecclesiastes, most scholars agree, dates to the second half of the third century B.C.E. and was written by a sophisticated Jerusalemite intellectual. On its face the book is a rather remarkable collection of Israelite Wisdom literature—aphoristic, skeptical, even hedonistic.1 The Gilgamesh epic, on the other hand, is a long Mesopotamian narrative masterpiece, fragments of which have survived in a Sumerian version from as early as the beginning of the second […]
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The ancient Near Eastern texts commonly referred to as Wisdom literature by modern scholars are concerned with formulating rules for a good life on the basis of experience. The literary genre runs from counsels and proverbs to speculations on the problem of undeserved suffering and the meaning of life. Although the intellectual outlook of the ancient Near Eastern sages is religious throughout, Wisdom literature transcends the cultural differences in cult and belief.
Hubert Grimme, “Babel und Koheleth-Jojakhin,” Orientalistische Literaturzeitung 8 (1905), pp. 432–438.
3.
Andrew George, The Epic of Gilgamesh: A New Translation (London: Allen Lane, Penguin, 1999), p. 124 (Meissner tablet, iii, 6–13).
4.
After George A. Barton, The Book of Ecclesiastes, (International Critical Commentaries (Edinburgh, 1908), p. 162, the quotation of Shiduri’s counsel became almost a standard ingredient in commentaries to Ecclesiastes 9:7–9.
5.
Morris Jastrow and Albert T. Clay, An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic, Yale Oriental Researches 4/3 (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1920).
6.
Aaron Shaffer, “The Mesopotamian Background of Qohelet 4:9–12, ” Eretz-Israel 8 (1967), pp. 246–250 (Hebrew). And “New Light on the Three-ply cord,” Eretz-Israel 9 (1969), pp. 159–160 (Hebrew).
7.
Note especially Oswald Loretz, Qohelet und der Alte Orient: Untersuchungen zu Stil und theologischer Thematik des Buches Qohelet (Freiburg, Basel, Vienna: Herder, 1964).
8.
For literature on the correspondences between Qoheleth and Gilgamesh see, in addition to the studies mentioned above, Jean de Savignac, “La sagesse de Qohéléth et l’épopée de Gilgamesh,” Vetus Testamentum 28 (1978), pp. 318–323; Bruce W. Jones, From Gilgamesh to Qoheleth, in The Bible in the Light of Cuneiform Literature: Scripture in Context III (Ancient Near Eastern Texts and Studies, vol. 8), ed. William W. Hallo et al.; Lewiston etc.: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1990), pp. 349–379.
9.
For the principal studies of the genre see Hans G. Güterbock, “Die historische Tradition and ihre literarische Gestaltung bei Babyloniern und Hethitern bis 1200,” Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 42 (1934), pp. 1–91, esp. pp. 19–20, 62–86; A. Kirk Grayson, Babylonian Historical-Literary Texts (Toronto and Buffalo: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1975), pp. 7–9; Erica Reiner, “Die akkadische Literatur,” in Wolfgang Rollig, ed., Altorientalische Literaturen (Neues Handbuch der Literaturwissenschaft 1 (Wiesbaden: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion, 1978), pp. 151–210, esp. pp. 176–180; Brian Lewis, The Sargon Legend: A Study of the Akkadian Text (American Schools of Oriental Research [ASOR] Diss.Ser. 4 (Cambridge, MA: ASOR, 1980), pp. 87–93; Joan Westenholz, “The Heroes of Akkad,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 103 (1983), pp. 327–336; Tremper Longman III, Fictional Akkadian Autobiography: A Generic and Comparative Study (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1991).
10.
Joan Goodnick Westenholz was the first to draw the parallel (review of The Sargon Legend, by Brian Lewis, in The Journal of Near Eastern Studies 43 [1984], pp. 73–79, esp. 77). She was followed by Longman, Fictional Akkadian Autobiography, pp. 120–123; and Choong Leong Seow, “Qohelet’s Autobiography,” in Fortunate the Eyes That See: Essays in Honor of David Noel Freedman in Celebration of His Seventieth Birthday, ed. Astrid B. Beck et al. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), pp. 275–287; Seow, Ecclesiastes: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Anchor Bible 18C (New York: Doubleday, 1997), esp. pp. 60–65.
11.
Translation by Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, 3 vols. (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1973), vol. 1, pp. 196–197.
12.
Harper’s Song 17.2–3, in Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, vol. 3, p. 198.
13.
Papyrus Insinger 20.6, in Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, vol. 3, p. 175.
14.
Ankhsheshonq 32.18, in Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, vol. 3, p. 211; cf. 31.1, p. 209.
15.
Ankhsheshonq 22.5, in Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, vol. 3, p. 176.
16.
Joseph Blenkinsopp, Safe, Priest, Prophet: Religious and Intellectual Leadership in Ancient Israel (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1995), p. 58.
17.
For a description of the genre, see Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, vol. 1, pp. 5–7.
18.
Paul Humbert, Recherches sur les sources egyptiennes, Memoires de l’Université de Neuchätel 7 (Neuchätel: Secretariat de l’Université, 1929), chap. 4, p. 124.
19.
See, e.g., Roger Norman Whybray, Ecclesiastes, New Century Bible Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1989), pp. 8–9; Ronald E. Murphy, Ecclesiastes (Word Biblical Commentary 23A (Dallas: Word Books, 1992), pp. xxi-xxii; Seow, Ecclesiastes, p. 37.
20.
Edmund Pfleiderer, Die Philosophie des Heraklit (Berlin, 1886).
21.
R. Braun, Kohelet und die frühhellenistische Popular-philosophie, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1973), p. 170.
22.
Pfleiderer, Philosophie des Heraklit, p. 255.
23.
Blenkinsopp, “Ecclesiastes 3.1–5: Another Interpretation,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 66 (1995), pp. 55–64.
24.
Peter Machinist, “Fate, miqreh, and Reason: Some Reflections on Qoheleth and Biblical Thought,” in Solving Riddles and Untying Knots: Biblical, Epigraphic, and Semitic Studies in Honor of Jonas C. Greenfield, ed. Ziony Zevit, Seymour Gitin and Michael Sokoloff (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1995), pp. 159–175, esp. 165.
25.
See, for example, Martin Hengel, Judentum und Hellenismus, 2nd ed., Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 10 (Tübingen: Mohr, 1969), esp. pp. 220–221.
The objection that the word miqreh is also found in earlier biblical books (1 Samuel 6:9, 20:26; Ruth 2:3) is not valid (Kurt Galling, “Stand und Aufgabe der Kohelet-Forschung,” Theologische Rundschau, n.s. 6 (1934), pp. 355–373, esp. p. 362). There the word refers to a chance occurrence, whereas Qoheleth uses the erm exclusively in connection with death as the predetermined boundary of human (and animal) life (Machinist, “Fate, miqreh, and Reason,” p. 170). Qoheleth, in other words, turns the word into an abstract notion, which puts him in the vicinity of the Greek philosophical tradition.
26.
Quotation from Murphy, Ecclesiastes, p. xiv.
27.
See also Michael P. Streck, Die Bildersprache der akkadischen Epik, Alter Orient und Altes Testament 264 (Münster: Ugarit Verlag, 1999), p. 101, who refers to Greek anemolios, “windy,” i.e., vain, empty, insubstantial.
28.
I am quoting from Seow, Ecclesiastes, p. 64.
29.
See Lichtheim, Late Egyptian Wisdom Literature in the International Context, Orbis biblicus et orientalis 52 (Fribourg: Universitätsverlag; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983), p. 27.
