Always searching for deeper, broader, and diverse meaning in my reading, I found a book titled Such Is Life! A Close Encouner with Ecclesiates by Lloyd Geering.
Ecclesiastes is one of the last books included in the Hebrew Scriptures. It is believed to have been written by a sage after the return of the tribes from their Babylonian captivity in 586 BCE. It is, Geering suggests the humanist tradition of the Hebrew heritage.
Yes, you read correctly, the humanist tradition of the Hebrew Scriptures.
"... the sages were not concerned with the destiny of the Israelite people as a whole. They focused on the daily life of the human individual. ... were interested not in Israelites alone, but in all humans."
Ecclesiates is part of the "wisdom tradition" of the returning tribespeople, who brought back to Israel a more universal view of humankind. This "widsom tradition" is unlike the storical religious tradition of the Hebrew people who were left behind.
These returning sages of wisdom and humanism "spoke of Wisdom in much the same way as the Greeks spoke of the Logos or Reason... They exhorted people to take full responsiblity for their own lives and not to look to God to deliver them from evil by miraculous interventions..." [Geering]
Many of us place a certain amount of faith or belief in the humanist tradition. I am wondering how many of us have ever read Ecclesiates with the hermeneutical lens of humanist thought?
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