Qohelet, author of Ecclesiastes. (1.1)

by Kent Leslie ✉️

The words of the Teacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. [1.1 NRSVue] The word “Teacher” in the original text is קֹהֶ֣לֶת, transliterated “Qohelet“ or “Qoheleth” (that last letter in the word, ת, is sometimes rendered “t” and sometimes “th”). It’s a feminine noun, but “son of David,” or “ben David,” means Qoheleth’s meant to be a man. With a woman’s title. Little wierd, but let’s not judge.

Qohelet comes from the verb קָהַל/qahál, meaning “assemble” or “gather together.” In the New Testament an assembly is called an ἐκκλησία/ekklesía, which is also the Greek word (and when it’s spelled ecclesia, the Latin word) for church. An ecclesiastes would be the person who gathers the assembly or church together. So that’s what the Latin bible, the Vulgate, calls Qohelet. Verse 1 in that translation is “Verba Ecclesiastes filii David regis Hierusalem.” And when John Wycliffe, the first guy to produce an Engish-language bible in 1395, translated verse 1, he kept the name Ecclesiastes: “The wordis of Ecclesiastes, sone of Dauid, the kyng of Jerusalem.”

Later bible translator Miles Coverdale, in 1535, changed that to Preacher. That stuck for a few centuries; it’s in the Geneva Bible, King James, Revised Version, American Standard, and Revised Standard. Then the Good News Bible tried Philosopher, the New International Version tried Teacher, and the Message tried Quester. Me, I might go with Gatherer or Assembler for a translation. But I tend to call him Qohelet.

Qohelet is “the son of David, king in Jerusalem,” and that immediately makes people think of Solomon ben David, the second-wisest king ever. (Everybody remember the wisest? Right, Jesus.) So, traditionally, people have said Solomon wrote this book. Even though his name’s not on it… but it is on everything else Solomon wrote.

Grammatical and historical evidence says Solomon can’t have written it. The Old Testament was written in ancient Hebrew and Aramaic, and linguists have determined there are two kinds of ancient Hebrew it’s written in: “Early Biblical Hebrew” and “Late Biblical Hebrew.” (Late Biblical Hebrew is heavily influenced by Aramaic, becuase that’s what the Israelites learned to speak in Babylon.) Everything written before the Babylonians invaded in 587BC was written in Early Biblical Hebrew; everything written after was written in Late Biblical Hebrew. And Ecclesiastes is written in Late Biblical Hebrew. Not the Hebrew of Solomon, who lived in the 900s BC.

Now it could be that somebody found a 9th-century book and decided to update all the language, like Kenneth Taylor, the author of the Living Bible, did with the American Standard Version. But that theory is a long shot. The more reasonable explanation is another king of Jerusalem, another descendant of David, wrote it.

Which one? I really don’t know. No one does. The last kings of Jerusalem before the Babylonians came were mostly bad, and are unlikely to have written the book. The last good king was Josiah ben Amon, who died in the late 600s.

Even though we may never know exactly who wrote it, let’s assume Qohelet was honest about being king of Jerusalem, and a descendant of David. Maybe he was an unofficial king of Israel—like Zerubabbel, the descendent of David who rebuilt the temple. The Persians never gave Zerubbabel the title of king, but they did put him in charge of Jerusalem. But certainly it’s somebody who ruled Jerusalem before the Hasmonean kings in the 2nd century BC—who were Levites, not descendants of David.