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The Meaning of Life in Ecclesiastes: Coherence, Purpose, and Significance from a Psychological Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 September 2019

Arthur Keefer
Arthur Keefer*
Affiliation:
Eton College
*
email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Attending to ongoing debates about the “meaning of life” in Ecclesiastes, this article determines how Qoheleth addressed meaningfulness by drawing on a threefold scheme of definitions for life’s meaning. These definitions are derived from psychological research and used to argue that all three conceptions appear within the book of Ecclesiastes. Qoheleth was primarily concerned with life’s “coherence,” which depends on predictable and reliable patterns in life that render it sensible, yet he also addressed life’s “purpose” and “significance.” While primarily determining how these three forms of meaning, along with their attendant ideas, are handled within Ecclesiastes itself, this article also demonstrates how resources from psychological research help to resolve debates among biblical interpreters, who agree far more than it at first appears once clearer definitions of “meaning” are employed.

Keywords

EcclesiastesQohelethmeaning of lifeלבה/heḇelpsychology
Type
Articles
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 112 , Issue 4 , October 2019 , pp. 447 - 466
Copyright
© President and Fellows of Harvard College 2019 

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Footnotes

*

I am very grateful for the comments of the reviewers at HTR, whose suggestions I followed at many points, and I am especially indebted to Michael Rhodes for his help on an early version of the manuscript. The initial research for this article was funded by a generous residential grant from Gladstone’s Library in Hawarden, Wales.

References

1 As far as I am aware, Arthur Peake made the first explicit comment about life’s “meaningfulness” in Ecclesiastes (The Problem of Suffering in the Old Testament [London: Epworth, 1904] 126). “Life is meaningless” because human action achieves “no abiding result,” showing life to be “a closed circle from which man cannot get away.” George Barton later commented on 1:2–11 that “Life and the processes of nature are an endless and meaningless repetition” (A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Ecclesiastes [ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1908] 69). He appeals to Wright who nowhere refers to the meaninglessness of such cycles. See Charles H. H. Wright, The Book of Koheleth, Commonly Called Ecclesiastes, Considered in Relation to Modern Criticism, and to the Doctrines of Modern Pessimism, with a Critical and Grammatical Commentary and a Revised Translation (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1883) 141–82. Philosopher Wendell O’Brien says, “it was only early in the nineteenth century that writers began to write directly about ‘the meaning of life,’ ” when Arthur Schopenhauer articulated “der Sinn des Lebens” (“The Meaning of Life: Early Continental and Analytic Perspectives,” The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://www.iep.utm.edu/mean-ear). See Schopenhauer’s essay “On Human Nature: Character” (1851).

2 James, Crenshaw, Old Testament Wisdom: An Introduction (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1998) 116. I refer to the literary text as “Ecclesiastes” as distinct from “Qoheleth,” whether narrator, persona, or implied author.Google Scholar

3 Choon-Leong, Seow, Ecclesiastes: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 18C; New York: Doubleday, 1997) 59.Google Scholar

4 For interpreters who locate a concern with the meaning of life in Ecclesiastes, often without defining the concept, see, among others, Norbert Lohfink (Kohelet [KAT 1; Würzburg: Echter, 1980] 21) who writes: “Der Horizont der Frage [Eccl 1:3] ist die Welt als solche. Diese ist eine durchlichtete Wirklichkeit (»Sonne«), aber in ihr stellt sich dennoch für den Menschen die Sinnfrage [question of meaning]”); Aarre Lauha, Kohelet (BKAT 19; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1978) 59–60; Tremper Longman III, The Book of Ecclesiastes (NICOT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998) passim; Tilmann Zimmer, Zwischen Tod und Lebensglück. Eine Untersuchung zur Anthropologie Kohelets (BZAW 286; Berlin: de Gruyter) 32, 218; Michael V. Fox, A Time to Tear Down and a Time to Build Up: A Rereading of Ecclesiastes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999) passim; Ludger Schwienhorst-Schönberger, Kohelet (HThKAT; Freiburg: Herder, 2004) 154; Graham Ogden, Qoheleth (Readings; Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 2007) 23, 51; Craig Bartholomew, Ecclesiastes (BCOTWP; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009) passim; Melanie Köhlmoos, Kohelet. Der Prediger Salomo (ATD; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015) 56–57. The pattern also appears among systematic theologians: Karl, Barth, The Doctrine of Creation (trans. G. T., Thomson and Harold, Knight; vol. 3.1 of Church Dogmatics; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956) 245; Stanley, Grenz, Theology for the Community of God (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1994) 749. Aside from such assertions, certain interpreters argue against particular meaning of life interpretations, like Mark Sneed, for example, who accuses Fox and Crenshaw of anachronism because they overlap Ecclesiastes and modern existentialism (Mark Sneed, The Politics of Pessimism in Ecclesiastes [Ancient Israel and Its Literature 12; Atlanta: SBL Press, 2012] 168–70). See below for further examples.Google Scholar

5 Although the results of my argument may inform diachronic approaches to Ecclesiastes, I treat the book in its final form. Matters of authorship, redaction, and editing do not influence the present argument.

6 For a concise overview of philosophical approaches to Ecclesiastes, see Jaco, Gericke, “A Comprehensive Typology of Philosophical Perspectives on Qohelet,” Verbum et Ecclesia 36 (2015) 1–7.Google Scholar

7 Thaddeus, Metz, “The Meaning of Life,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (ed. E. N., Zalta), June 3, 2013Google Scholar, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2013/entries/life-meaning. Metz has surveyed the field and determined that, by “meaning,” many philosophers mean something different from happiness or rightness: “If talk about meaning in life is not by definition talk about happiness or rightness, then what is it about? There is as yet no consensus in the field.” In view of this lack of consensus, Metz proffers possibilities that amount to “a grab-bag of heterogenous ideas.” For a helpful discussion, see Ronald Hepburn, “Questions about the Meaning of Life,” RelS 1 (1966) 125–40.

8 Frank, Martela and Michael, Steger, “The Three Meanings of Meaning in Life: Distinguishing Coherence, Purpose, and Significance,” The Journal of Positive Psychology 11 (2016) 531–45Google Scholar. I am using meaning of life to refer to what Martela and Steger call meaning in life, that is, how humans experience meaning, though the distinction is not entirely convincing (532). For similar results, see Login George and Crystal Park, “Meaning in Life as Comprehension, Purpose, and Mattering: Toward Integration and New Research Questions,” Review of General Psychology 20 (2016) 205–20.

9 Martela, and Steger, , “Three Meanings,” 538.Google Scholar

10 Ibid., 538–39.

11 Ibid., 533.

12 Ibid., 534.

13 Normalizations and translations are my own. For transliteration, see W. G., Lambert, Babylonian Wisdom Literature (2nd ed.; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1996) 63–89, esp. 86.Google Scholar

14 Christoph, Uehlinger, “Qohelet im Horizont mesopotamischer, levantinischer und ägyptischer Weisheitsliteratur der persischen und hellenistischen Zeit,” in Das Buch Kohelet: Studien zur Struktur, Geschichte, Rezeption und Theologie (ed. L., Schwienhorst-Schönberger; BZAW 254; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1997) 155–248Google Scholar, at 175. Uehlinger specifically concentrates on the place of piety in both texts. I would argue that coherence-related issues can also be found in Papyrus Insinger, The Complaints of Khakheperraseneb, and The Dispute between a Man and His Ba.

15 Fox, Time, 133.

16 Ibid., 5. He does attach Albert Camus’s notion of absurdity to this concept.

17 Ibid., 138–39. He adds: “The foundation of this entire concept of meaningfulness is Qohelet’s belief in a deity who, in principle, guarantees the working of right causation” (139).

18 Seow, Ecclesiastes, 55, 59.

19 Fox, Time, 49, 139. Fox derives five qualities of the acts-consequence connection from Ecclesiastes and proffers them as criteria for meaning. If an action lacks an immediate, individual, recognizable, consistent, or final consequence, then Qoheleth labels it meaningless (i.e., ). These criteria do account for certain statements in Ecclesiastes (e.g., 5:9[10], 14[15]; 8:14; 9:11) and illuminate part of Qoheleth’s dilemma, but, as I show above, they do not account for all of the material, leaving significant exceptions for how meaning of life is understood in Ecclesiastes (see also the commendation to fear God and resist sin [5:5–6(6–7); 8:12]). For additional critique, see Stuart Weeks, Ecclesiastes and Skepticism (LHBOTS 541; London: T&T Clark International, 2012) 110–20; cf. Mark Sneed, “ as ‘Worthless’ in Qoheleth: A Critique of Michael Fox’s ‘Absurd’ Thesis,” JBL 136 (2017) 879–94.

20 Bartholomew, Ecclesiastes, 187–88.

21 Although Köhlmoos says that envy motivates work, the text may also remain a predication, defining all work as envy (Kohelet, 133–34; so Schwienhorst-Schönberger, Kohelet, 294): .

22 Martela, and Steger, , “Three Meanings,” 535.Google Scholar

23 Bartholomew, , Ecclesiastes, 302.Google Scholar

24 Ibid., 302–3. So Lauha, Kohelet, 167–68.

25 Fox, Time, 292.

26 AEL 1:165. Arguing that the idiom means “to be alive,” Seow mentions Pss 49:20[19] and 58:9[8]; Job 3:16; and The Epic of Gilgamesh (Ecclesiastes, 347–48).

27 Gericke, , “Axiological Assumptions in Qohelet: A Historical-philosophical Clarification,” Verbum et Ecclesia 33 (2012) 1–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Fox, Time, 140–44; Daniel, Lys, L’Ecclésiaste. Ou, Que vaut la vie? (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1977) 73Google Scholar. In 1885, E. H. Plumptre wrote, “The question [Eccl 1:3] is in substance, almost in form, identical with that of our times ‘Is life worth living?’ ” while in Austria, near the same time, G. W. Bickell articulated a similar interpretation in terms of “den Wert des Daseins” and concentrated on absolute and relative goods in the book. See Plumptre, , Ecclesiastes; or, The Preacher, with Notes and Introduction (CBSC; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1885) 104Google Scholar; Bickell, , Der Prediger [Ecclesiastes] über den Wert des Daseins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1884) 1–54Google Scholar, esp. 29, 57.

28 Gericke, , “Axiological Assumptions,” 6.Google Scholar

29 Longman, , Ecclesiastes, 62–64.Google Scholar

30 Ibid., 77, 121.

31 A concentration on Qoheleth’s search for happiness and the greatest good (summum bonum) characterizes interpretations of Ecclesiastes throughout the first two millennia of the Common Era. See Christian, D. Ginsburg, Cohelet, Commonly Called the Book of Ecclesiastes (London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1861) 27–98Google Scholar, cf. 68; see also Ruth, Sandberg, Rabbinic Views of Qohelet (Biblical Studies 57; Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 1999)Google Scholar; Eric, S. Christianson, Ecclesiastes through the Centuries (Blackwell Bible Commentaries; Oxford: Blackwell, 2007) 98–141.Google Scholar

32 The Mesopotamian Dialogue of Pessimism concludes with the question, “What then is good?”

33 Fox, Time, 250–51.

34 The additional introductory passage (1:12–18) confirms the epistemological flavor, as do terms that relate to investigating and knowing throughout the book (see, e.g., in 1:14; 2:3, 12; 3:16; 5:17[18]; 8:9; 9:11; and in 1:17; 2:14; 3:12, 14; 7:25; 8:16; 12:9).

35 Cf. 7:12 and 10:11, as well as other lexemes derived from the root , referring to a comparative advantage (a sense of “better for”; 2:13; 5:9; 6:8; 7:11–12; 10:10–11; cf. 6:11) or something in excess (2:15; 7:16; 12:12).

36 Qoheleth views “toil” as efforts to produce in life, or the productions themselves, which are subject to frustration (2:18, 22–23; 10:15). Yet toil is given by God (5:18[19]; 8:15) and can be done with wisdom and pleasure (2:21; 5:17[18]), even producing a good wage (4:9). These conflicting results puzzle Qoheleth and his audience throughout the book (see, e.g., 2:17 and 9:4–6; 2:13 and 2:15–16). However, the fruitfulness of some toil and, in all cases, its relative productivity indicate that futility or unprofitability in life does not characterize the entire human endeavor. Humans can and do achieve something of value through work, suggesting that an absence of significance is not Qoheleth’s main problem.

37 “Edge” is Seow’s language (Ecclesiastes, 104).

38 So also 2:15–16 and with other lexemes derived from (e.g., 3:19; 7:11).

39 Gerhard von Rad suggests that the “lot” [] given to humanity (Eccl 3:22; 5:18–19) is the search for meaning (Wisdom in Israel [trans. James Martin; London: SCM, 1972] 231, 235); similarly, Köhlmoos, Kohelet, 56–57. But the extends more from the search for “profit” [] in life and refers to the portion of life’s activity (5:18[19]; 9:6), possessions, and pleasure (2:10; 9:9) that one has been granted.

40 Martela and Steger, “Three Meanings,” 534.

41 In The Doomed Prince (AEL 2:200–203) a prince receives a fate at birth that he will die by one of three animals, so his father keeps him within a house. Once grown, the prince asks, “To what purpose is my sitting here?” While the prince questions the reason for remaining inside, and in that way resembles the “purpose” meaning of life, the narrative reveals an inquiry not so much into this concept as it does into the prince’s desire to follow his heart despite prophetic prediction (AEL 2:200–201). Concerns for purpose are more firmly taken up by Aristotle (Hallvard Fossheim, “Individual, Society, and Teleology: An Aristotelian Conception of Meaning in Life,” in On Meaning in Life [ed. Beatrix Himmelmann; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013] 45–64).

42 Seow, Ecclesiastes, 175. On an apparently mundane level, but again theologically informed, the sayings of 11:1–6 may advise various postures toward an unknown future, whether taking risks and being generous despite the circumstances (vv. 1–2) or guarding against analysis paralysis (v. 4). Although the meaning of these passages and their relation to purpose are not as clear as the others, they seem to reinforce the combination of epistemological limitations and future-oriented thought and action (so “you do not know” in vv. 2, 5–6).

43 For additional biblical literature, see, Annette, Schellenberg, Erkenntnis als Problem. Qohelet und die alttestamentliche Diskussion um das menschliche Erkennen (OBO 188; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002). She considers “Erkenntnis als Problem” in Old Testament wisdom, prophetic, and apocalyptic literature, asking where, why, and how this problem arose and occurred. With a sharp look at Qoheleth’s epistemological struggle, Schellenberg determines the greatest thematic areas of knowledge and its limitations as “Tod, Zukunft, ‘Tun Gottes’ ” (74, also esp. 36–43, 64–74). As a whole, her study exposes a manifold set of knowledge themes, with the meaning of life not included (for a thorough summary see 291–300).Google Scholar

44 See Lauha, Kohelet, 30–33, 36; Robert, Gordis, Koheleth: The Man and His World—A Study of Ecclesiastes (3rd ed.; New York: Schocken Books, 1968) 115–16Google Scholar, also 113–21. See Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies on Ecclesiastes: An English Version with Supporting Studies; Proceedings of the Seventh International Colloquium on Gregory of Nyssa (St. Andrews, 5–10 September 1990) (ed. Stuart George Hall; trans. S. G. Hall and Rachel Moriarty; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1993) 35 (281:5–8).

45 Martela and Steger, , “Three Meanings,” 539.Google Scholar

46 For a convincing treatment of the carpe diem and statements, see Seow, who argues that fulfilling the carpe diem refrain lies largely outside of human control (Ecclesiastes, passim).

47 This embrace of meaning in life over against its incoherence perhaps reflects Qoheleth’s point in 11:1–6, put so well by Weeks: “Any life faces uncertainty and unpredictable ruin, but no life will be improved by indecision and inaction” (Ecclesiastes, 96).

48 Martela and Steger, “Three Meanings,” 535–36.