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Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 223.8077
EAN num: 9780800696047
ISBN number: 0800696042
Label: Augsburg Fortress Publishing houses
Manufacturer: Augsburg Fortress Publishing houses
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 144
Printing Date: 2003-03
Publishing house: Augsburg Fortress Publishing houses
Sale Popularity Level: 1389520
Studio: Augsburg Fortress Publishing houses
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Product Description:
This new addition to the successful Continental Commentary series is a significant and fresh treatment of Qoheleth (or Ecclesiastes). A famed professor presents a startlingly new translation of this often perplexing book of the Old Testament. Lohfink also argues for a rather different interpretation of the book than one finds elsewhere. Rather than reading the book’s perspective as depressing, lost, or cynical, he highlights the elements of joy and balance. The volume includes introduction, new translation, commentary, parallel passages, bibliography, and indexes.
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Rated by buyers 
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Of all the commentaries I used to try to discern the ongoing theme and purpose of Ecclesiastes, this book is the best. My purpose in studying the book was to rewrite it in poetical musical form, for a potential oratorio. The verse by verse commentary not only showed some humor, many parallel historical references ("When you swear an oath to God, do not believe that he forgets it" (Sententia 347), some pithy down-to-earth language ("Better a name esteemed than scented creams---" Eccl 7:1), but also true poetry, rewritten in his own style. The translater, Sean McEvenue, must be a poet. One understands why the book made it into the wisdom literature of Scripture and why it is timeless.
Rated by buyers 
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Lohfink creates a hypothetical setting in 3rd century B.C. Jerusalem and Alexandria under the Ptolemids. He represents Ecclesiastes as a textbook for Jews in Jerusalem, exhorting them to utilize the Greek worldview as a stepping stone to sucess in the increasingly competitive Hellenistic environment. However, he often understands the text's reference to be Alexandria rather than Jerusalem (e.g., 2:3-10; 8:1b-4;10:2-3, 16-17, 20).
Throughout the commentary, Lohfink represents the composition as though the text has been repeatedly manipulated by editors and copyists. Yet, late in the volume, he admits that "no theory attempting to show a variety of hands at work in the history of the book's composition has proven to be convincing" (143). In addition, he treats the autobiographical sections as fiction.
Although there are many problems with Lohfink's commentary, he at least avoids the error of concluding that pessimism is the philosophical core of Qoheleth. He rightly understands the book's theme of living joyfully in spite of one's situation in this life--even in the face of inevitable death.
Ultimately, those who deny Solomonic authorship will have a greater appreciation of this volume than those, like this reviewer, who adhere to Solomonic authorship (see Gleason Archer, "The Linguistic Evidence for the Date of `Ecclesiastes,'" JETS 12 [1969]: 167-81.). Lohfink ignores Archer's seminal essay as well as the best of English commentaries such as Michael A. Eaton, Ecclesiastes: An Introduction and Commentary, TOTC (InterVarsity Press, 1983), and Duane A. Garrett, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, NAC (Broadman & Holman, 1993)
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