Ecclesiastes: When The Bible Does Philosophy, Transcript

Ecclesiastes: When The Bible Does Philosophy | Secular Bible Study (Episode 21) - YouTube

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Transcript

(00:00) Welcome to Mind Shift. I'm Brandon. Today is episode 21 of my secular Bible study series, and we are looking at Ecclesiastes. What an enigma of a book! This book seemingly doesn't fit with the rest of the canon at all, and it's one that I find incredibly interesting. I find myself really torn. Part of me wants to cover what I believe is the correct Christian interpretation of this book because I think that the average Christian has no idea what to do with this book, and most of the guesses I hear seem to be wrong according to my understanding. But then part of me wants to cover the secular route of it, like normal, and talk about its philosophical meanings, etc. It is interesting because, Christian or non-believer, this book can be taken in many different ways. You know, a lot of people try to just overlook all of its darkness. Yes, it is mainly dark; the theme is meaningless. Now, the biggest thing that I think we have to understand is there is a word that is used over and over in this book: "hevel" or "heav," and different people have translated it in different ways. Sometimes "meaningless." My version here, the ESV, uses the word "vanity." The word in Hebrew that best matches up is "vapor," so something that can't be grasped, I think, is what it's really saying here. Now, you add on those negative overtones, and it gets into meaninglessness, and that is a main theme of this book. There's no doubt about it. It's interesting to see how my thoughts have evolved, even while I was still a believer, and then once I wasn't a believer, and then also as my personal understanding of different philosophies has evolved. So whether you are an existentialist, an absurdist, a nihilist, or, again, a believer or someone who doesn't have a particular philosophy in mind, this book is going to give you a lot to think about. This is a book about time and death, purpose and meaning. I'm filming this on Tuesday morning, shortly after my video came out on the Christian response to tragedy, and a lot of the comments I'm seeing from Christians so far, as they're coming in, are so funny to me because they seem to match up with Ecclesiastes, but in a way that they don't like. Let me explain really quickly. A lot of people are trying to say, "Well, so what? So what? You know, if you're right and there's no God, it's all meaningless anyway, like our time on Earth simply doesn't matter." No, that's what your book, Ecclesiastes, is saying. Your book is saying there's nothing new under the sun. Your book is saying that we all go in these circles and nothing ever changes, and at the end of the day, we'll wash away, but the ocean will still lap up on the sand. That's yours, not mine. Atheists believe many different things, but I do find hope and pleasure in day-to-day existence because I know it's all we have. Christians, believing in tomorrow and believing that it will indeed be better, are robbed of this, and I think you'll see that very clearly in the last verse of this book. So again, I'm flustered with exactly how to tackle this book, but I think maybe it's short, so maybe we should just look at what you get from each chapter. Let's try that.

(03:15) Chapter one is summarized by saying it's all meaningless; it's all vanity. "Vanity of vanities" is how it starts. You gain wisdom, and guess what? Now you know even less. You think what you do on this Earth matters? You couldn't be more wrong. Your time will end; someone else's time will come; their time will end; no one will be remembered; nothing will matter. "What has been is what will be," one of my favorite verses here from chapter 1. And by the way, a ton of idioms that we have today derive straight from this book: "nothing new under the sun," "a time for everything," "from dust to dust," etc. Hopefully, I'll point out some more as we go through it. But right here in chapter 1 is the second part of that verse, so it's verse 9: "What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun." Okay, so that really sums up chapter 1. We're painting the picture: what is our current condition?

(04:18) Chapter 2 is a further exposition on this, and it's broken down into three parts: the vanity, or again, we could say meaninglessness, or vapor, or mist, or smoke, or enigma, or whatever word you want to describe this evanescent idea of something that won't last, that we can't quite fully grasp or understand or comprehend. And so the three parts are the vanity of self-indulgence, the vanity of living wisely, and the vanity of toil. So however you spend your life, you give in; you have the most hedonistic, self-serving pleasures—meaningless. What if you spend your life trying to seek wisdom, though, and study and learn as much as you can? Meaningless. Well, what if you work hard? What if you build? What if you create? What if you employ? What if you really just try to milk this life for all it's worth and you truly give it your best shot? Meaningless. And each for their different reasons. The hedonist—well, it won't matter in the end, will it? There's only so many days you can do this. The one seeking wisdom—well, the more you learn, the more sad you're going to be because the state of affairs of things is pretty drastically terrible. The one who works—is it going to be worth it? What about all the stress? What about all that you will miss out on? Right, so we are just doubling down on how awful and without meaning this life really is.

(05:14) Chapter 3 takes kind of a weird uptick, and this is the time for everything. So it starts off by saying, "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die," etc. And to me, at first, it seems to be in stark contrast to what we just saw in chapter 2, right? If there is a time for everything—a time to work and a time to play, a time to seek wisdom and a time to rest and relax—then surely some of these things can be good in moderation or in their time, and it seems to be what this says. But the second part of chapter 3, the speaker here really changes things. He says, "I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart." This is a big theological point, and it's something that I want to spend an entire video on, so we're going to skip over that for now. Yet, so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end, we'll just never be able to fully grasp God's plan, and we've been almost like little worker ants given these menial tasks to occupy ourselves here in this earthly existence. And then we get into the weird ending of chapter three, which is the "from dust to dust" part. I'm going to read this to you. I know we're doing more reading than we typically do in a book overview. I'm also going to let you know that points 2 through 7, I have no idea what's going to happen with. I think it's really important just to try to break this book down. I think that's going to be my main goal for today's video, but let's see where we go. I said in my heart, with regard to the children of man, that God is testing them, that they may see that they themselves are but beasts. For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beast is the same. As one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beast, for all is vanity. All go to one place; all are from the dust, and to the dust will return. Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down into the earth? So I saw there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his work, for that is his lot. Who can bring him to see what will be after him?

(07:13) So this is huge. I think this is huge for a few reasons. One, the wisest man—this is attributed to Solomon, and there is some scholarly debate on if that's possible or not—but assuming that the authorship is correct here, this is the wisest person that has ever lived, that God gave direct knowledge and information to, that no one will ever be wiser than, that no one has ever been as wise before, and he can't even make a distinction between man and beast. He doesn't know what happens to the spirit of man. Does it go up afterward? There is no big concept of heaven and hell or the afterlife at all. We have Sheol, where you go to sleep with your fathers, is really all we get in the Old Testament. We even have David's recognition of Sheol. So one generation later, to have Solomon all of a sudden have some concept of heaven obviously doesn't make sense, also because we know heaven and hell are New Testament creations to be added on top of the old Jewish ideologies here. But this is problematic for the Christian believer because Solomon is saying, or the writer is saying, in light of what we can't know about the afterlife and what happens next, all we have is the work that God has given us, the duty of man, and we're going to see that repeated in the very last verse where we get the true meaning of life. And I think that that is in complete contradiction to everything the believer actually thinks—that today doesn't matter, we shouldn't be storing up treasures on this earth, we shouldn't be concerning ourselves with the things of this world, we live for the next, we store up our treasures in heaven. Solomon has a clear message for what man's duty is and how we best serve God, and I'll give you a hint: it comes down to two things: fearing God and obeying his commands. That's what your book says. Maybe that's why Christians don't like this book, because it's not about all the great pleasures you'll get to do dancing in heaven forever. It's about the stark reality of our time here on earth and the duty that we have as created beings.

(09:18) Okay, I'm definitely getting carried away. Let's go to chapter 4. I think we can skip over it pretty quickly. It is evil under the sun. It is more about loss and toiling for nothing and how it's not good to be alone, that we are stronger together, which is, again, this weird little light in the darkness. But it ends with something that I think we can utilize for the rest of the book, and it ends with this: "Surely this also is vanity and a striving after wind." And I think that it just helps us understand what this word "vanity," "hevel," means. He's doubling down, and I think that that allows us to see that word more as meaninglessness than some of the more lighter Christian words that have been translated in. Oh, it's all just kind of vapor. Oh, it's vanity. Vanity has a connotation that it's just man screwing things up. The very nature of this is that it's chasing after the wind. You can't grasp it; you can't collect it. It's impossible by nature.

(10:21) Chapter 5 is just doubling down on Proverbs after saying how everything else in this life is worthless and routine and it's going to eventually mean nothing. Where can we get some meaning? We get our first hint here and then again at the end of the book, and this one is "fear God." During the same section, he goes on to list how even wealth and honor don't matter. All right, so he started with things like working and gaining wisdom and being hedonistic, and now he's saying even things like honor don't matter. It all fades away. A lot of this is going to be in direct opposition to what we've seen in Proverbs, which I think is really interesting, where it is so important to not be a fool, to be esteemed in some regard. Not here. This was just Solomon on a bad day, I guess.

(11:20) Chapter 6 is just more doubling down. I'm going to read you just the last paragraph of chapter 6: "Whatever has come to be has already been named, and it is known what man is, and that he is not able to dispute with one stronger than he. The more words, the more vanity, and what is the advantage to man? For who knows what is good for a man while he lives the few days of his vain life, which he passes like a shadow? For who can tell man what will be after him under the sun?" I haven't really talked about authorship that much, but we have two people: we have the writer and then we have the teacher. So the middle part of the book is the teacher extolling the wisdom, and the beginning, like the first and the last chapters, are the writer of the book who has shown us this great message from the teacher, giving his own spin on it or reemphasizing certain things or helping us break it down. So who is the writer? Who is the teacher? There are different ideas on that. A lot of the ideas seem like I said we're probably not going to do points 2 through 7 like we traditionally do, so I'm just going to cover it now. But chapter 1, verse 1 says, "The words of the preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem." So a lot of people have taken that to be Solomon. The problem is the reason there's debated scholarship on the authorship of this book is because it seems much later, like 5th through 3rd century BC, in terms of some of the ideas and the way of writing. It's very different than what we see in Proverbs, and it's a much later Jewish kind of tradition, which makes people believe that it would not have been Solomon, maybe just contrived in his name or pointed or hinted at him for the purposes of gaining acceptance or popularity.

(12:48) Moving on to chapter 7, we have the contrast of wisdom and folly. And so here we get this: hey, despite everything I just said, wisdom is still a good thing. And kind of backing up to Proverbs, there's still much to be gained from this. I think this book is awfully contradicting in and of itself, but I understand it at the same time. It's different views. It's saying within the small, yes, there's meaning, but greatly, no, it doesn't matter at all. And it's like, yeah, okay. But the way he's coming in and out of it, we keep getting a secondary point, and so I'll show you that. So the contrast of wisdom and folly goes through this chapter, and it says, you know, it is better to know certain things; it is better to act in certain ways, but it doesn't always mean that you're going to get what you want. It doesn't always mean that life is going to work out well. This is good advice, that's true. It's almost like there's no justice in the world. Good people can fail; bad people can prosper, which is not what is said in Proverbs, by the way. But it is a much more realistic look at the world, which could make some very nihilistic or find meaninglessness. And how this author or the teacher is dealing with this is not to say, well, it's just how the world works, and we have to accept it; let's try to improve it. He says, in the awareness of this, what are we left with?

(13:53) Move on to chapter 8: keeping the king's commands, fearing the Lord. Verse 10 of chapter 8 is this: "Then I saw the wicked buried. They used to go in and out of the holy place and were praised in the city where they had done such things. This also is vanity because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily. The heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil. Though a sinner does evil a hundred times and prolongs his life, yet I know that it will be well with those who fear God because they fear before him. But it will not be well for the wicked; neither will he prolong his days like a shadow because he does not fear before God." So what I see this to be saying—and by the way, this book could be interpreted in a litany of ways—but what it seems very clear to me is, hey, don't worry because even though this life isn't that fair, at the end, whatever that means, if there's a concept of heaven or hell or just some final judgment or some earthly final comeuppance, etc., fearing God is still going to put you in a position to most likely, most of the time, receive something better. And the people that have benefited a hundred times, even though they're not doing the right thing, eventually will fall. The Bible is so concerned for the sake of the people to know that justice will be done, and I think it's so faulty. It took me a long time to really divorce myself from the idea that I needed there to be justice. We all—people that didn't choose to be here—we don't have free will. And I know not all of you will agree with me on this, but determinism seems to be very clear to me. And within that, I don't deserve anything better for the good things I do, and I don't deserve anything worse for the bad things that I do. I'm not saying there can't be accountability or responsibility or that we don't have to have law and order, but this innate desire to want to see people who do wrong get theirs and to think that if you do better somehow, without recognizing all of the reasons you do do better—the privilege that you have, the time and place you were born, the parents you had, the culture you were born into—it's a narcissistic idea that you should be rewarded. I honestly struggle with these concepts a lot, and the reason why they're so ingrained in our culture is honestly probably because of the Bible's focus on it. I mean, from the beginning to the end, this entire thing is about what man does determining what man gets and trying to tell people that if they do the right thing, they'll get the good thing. And don't worry about the people that do bad to you; I, the Lord, will take vengeance on them for you. I will make sure they get theirs. I see it in the comments all the time. People just revel in this idea, and I think, honestly, it's not a very beneficial idea. But I digress. So again, seven: have wisdom. It's still important, but it's not going to do everything you want it to do. But don't worry; fear the Lord anyways. That will still get you the justice in the end.

(17:01) Then we move on to chapter 9: death comes to all. This is where we get the idea of death being the great equalizer. So the teacher is saying, I've examined all of this; I've looked at everything, and whether you are wicked or good, whether you are poor or rich, death comes to all. And there's a longer list than that; it goes on and on and on. And after we hear that death is the great equalizer, we hear this in verse 7: "So go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do. Let your garments always be white; let not oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol to which you are going." Okay, I actually had forgotten how clearly he has a vision of the afterlife just being Sheol. Listen to this: "There is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol to which you are going." This is the teacher, the wisest man that has ever lived, addressing all people. He just got done listing all the different kinds of people. Remember, death is the great equalizer to all, and for all, there is no—I'm going to say it again—work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol to which you are going. How does this not directly contradict heaven? This is an atheistic statement. There's nowhere where you go when it's over, but you're here now. So despite how meaningless it may seem, create your own meaning. Eat your bread, be merry, drink your wine, enjoy the people around you. It's almost seemingly like this is said sarcastically, but I don't believe that it is. This is your portion in life and your toil at which you toil under the sun. So whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might. I love this. This is a call to action. This is a "tomorrow doesn't matter; today's all I have; let me do the best with it." It is not to just give in to hedonistic desire; it is "whatever you do, do it well." What a great, great, great mantra to have. How much better would the world be if everyone recognized there's no wisdom or work to be done in Sheol? If there is an afterlife, it's not for us in the ways that we think it is. So while we're here under the sun, this is how you live. I love this so much.

(19:18) So again, like I said, we are just on this man: hills and valleys. What is the meaning? Where are we going? Chapter 10, though, we get another idiom: "Dead flies make the perfumer's ointment give off a stench." So the fly in the ointment—many of you probably don't know that as common as "from dust to dust" or "there's nothing new under the sun," but it's a good one. And the point here is, "So a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor." So it goes on to give us kind of, again, a Proverbs-like warning on the things that we should do and not do, which, if life is really completely meaningless in the way that Christians say it is for atheists, so that nothing matters and we should just die, why do we get instruction here? Because even if it's ultimately meaningless, it doesn't mean we can't create meaning while we're here and that there aren't more beneficial and less beneficial ways to spend our time during that existence.

(20:18) Chapter 11 opens up with a pretty verse: "Cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days. Give a portion to seven, or even to eight, for you know not what disaster may happen on earth." To me, I see this as a reminder not to hoard, that we should share, we should take care of those around us. We don't know what disasters can happen, and if we're taking care of others, it will come back to us. It's so opposite of what we see in so much other scripture. It's so strange. And then in verse 7, again, we get this weird reversal: "Light is sweet, and it is pleasant for the eyes to see the sun. So if a person lives many years, let him rejoice in them all, but let him remember that the days of darkness will be many. All that comes is vanity. So rejoice, O young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes, but know that in all these things God will bring you into judgment." We were so close. We were so close to being able to understand that we can't control this life; we don't know what's next; we have to live; we have to live wisely; we have to create our own meaning. But then, don't forget, you're going to be judged. This culture just could not, no matter how close they got, truly divorce themselves from the idea of this God and His wrath.

(21:21) So it ends with chapter 12: "Remember your creator in your youth," and I'd encourage you to go read it, but I will read to you the last couple of verses: "Besides being wise, the preacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs with great care. The preacher sought to find words of delight, and uprightly he wrote words of truth. The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings; they are given by one shepherd." This, by the way, this little verse I just read is where a ton of Christians have inserted a Messianic idea that this is pointing toward Jesus, just so you're aware of that. "So, my son, beware of anything beyond these. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh. The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commands, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil." That is the Book of Ecclesiastes. That seems like a grand warning that despite how we live our life or what we think its meaning is, how meaningless it is or how meaningful we make it, we cannot escape God. And in all of that confusion, the only thing we can know and should know is to follow God and obey his commands, for this is the whole duty of man. Is that why God made us? Imagine making something with the intended, completely and wholly desired purpose of having them follow you because you would be judging them. "Follow" is too nice of a word: obey, submit, be subservient to. That's the whole thing that makes life seem meaningless—not knowing if there's a creator or not, not having a personal relationship because there's none to be had, and therefore being left to my own in this mysterious and incredible world where I have the privilege of making meaning, of spending my time pursuing goals, enjoying people, eating my bread, and drinking my wine. That makes sense to me. Trying desperately to follow the law that is impossible to follow, of a God that is invisible and hides himself from me while demanding my absolute slavery on penalty of some mysterious eternal judgment—that sounds like the definition of evil and insanity.

(23:34) So that's Ecclesiastes. I know we didn't go through all the main points, but I'm going to give you a rapid fire. Let's see. We talked about book overview; that's point one. Point two is authorship and date; we talked about that. Point three is context or historical accuracy; there's really nothing here to examine. There's no archaeological evidence that is going to support or dismiss anything that is said here. We just have an idea, again, of a certain sect of the Jewish people trying to come to terms with wisdom. This is considered a wisdom book, right there with Proverbs and Job. This book is most closely related, I would say, to Job. It is man's struggle to figure out meaning, especially in a world with an overarching ruling God. Point four is literary devices. This is circular; we went in circles. Did you see that? It is not linear, but each time we arrive at the same point in the circle, we get a little more information. And in this circular telling, we get all these different points about, again, the different vanities of this life, but despite that vanity, what we should know, what we can be doing, and the end goal. There's also some proverbs mixed into this and a little bit of storytelling features by the writer, not the teacher himself. Also, there are some poems. So those are all the literary techniques and devices. Point five is main themes. One, the main word here: "hevel," vapor, vanity, meaninglessness. That has to be an obvious theme. "Under the sun," meaning our earthly realm, our time on this planet with this particular consciousness, awake and aware, that ultimately, objectively, doesn't mean anything. However, there's a huge "but" right here, and that, I think, is the second main theme. It still feels good when the sun shines in your eyes. It's still nice to love your wife. It's still good to eat and drink and be merry with your friends. Don't get too bogged down in looking for wisdom and working too hard or even in seeking fun too much. Like, this is actually pretty good advice in the midst of this. It's just that it immediately comes with the baggage of, oh, and also make sure that within this, you're following all the commands because God, because judgment, because wrath. I would say the other theme is just philosophy in general. We are acknowledging the absurdity of life, the existential dread that comes with being awake and aware in this magnificent and terrifying world, the nihilism that can come with an understanding that ultimately there's no meaning, but then bringing that back from the brink by saying, here's how to create our own.

(25:56) Point six is reception and influence. I covered all the idioms we have from this. Like, talk about making its way. No matter what avenue you come down, whether it's religious or philosophical or secular, etc., there is wisdom in here. There are realities about our world. There are things to understand. "From dust to dust," that's great. There's some Christian hang-up with it on the other end because after the dust, there's something else. The soul, the spirit goes on. But if you just recognize your life from dust to dust, the influence of that poetry and the grappling with these existential questions has far-reaching influence. It's timeless. That's what it is. And when anything is timeless, it's going to have a ton of influence, and it has.

(26:29) And then point seven is contradictions. We talked about, I think, the main contradictions are just that it doesn't fit with anything else in the rest of the Bible or even with another book written by supposedly the same author. These ideas just don't marry in general. And for problematic passages, I'd kind of just put it in the same position that I put Proverbs. Watch the end if you didn't make it that far of my Proverbs video. There is a real issue with everything boiling down to the fear of the Lord, and ultimately that's what we get here: man's whole duty is to fear God and obey him. So in Proverbs, we're told man's whole wisdom is to fear God and obey him. Here, it's not just the wise thing to do; it is the required thing to do. It is our very purpose. That's a doubling down on this concept, and that concept was already very faulty and very harmful.

(27:27) So that's it. I know we did this a little differently than most of them. Let me know your thoughts. I know this book is taken in many different ways. Definitely let me know what you think. I hope that you've learned something today. I hope this has been interesting or entertaining to you at the very least. Thanks for watching. I will see you on Sunday with a brand new video, and until then, keep thinking. I wanted to personally thank my top tiers of support: my iconic GVI, Jacob, Jason, Oliver, and Sean; my humanist heroes, Jared and Christie; and my atheist advocates, Ann, Elijah Roet, and Sparky, as well as all my secular scholar patrons. If you believe in this mission or just enjoy watching the content, please consider joining these fine patrons and supporting the channel. Thanks, and have a great day.