Endnote 25 – Did Ecclesiastes Copy Gilgamesh?

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.