Shall we begin?\n
The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all [is] vanity.[Ecc 1:1-2<\/a> KJV]<\/blockquote>\nYou know, I was hoping to get through three verses in this first note, but I don’t think that’s going to happen, do you?\n
We’ve already talked about kohelet<\/i> the word that comes out in the KJV as the Preacher<\/i>, and I don’t know that we need to go on any more about it at this stage. I will note that it’s not the kohelet<\/i> here but just kohelet<\/i>, which makes it seem more like a name. Oh, and I didn’t mention that kohelet<\/i> has a feminine form, though it is used as a masculine noun—if it is a name, it’s in some sense like having a male character named Ricarda<\/i> or Michaela<\/i>—it’s not grammatically crazy or anything, but I think there’s a tension going on there, almost an opposition. If it’s a name.\n
In the second half of the verse—if we accept that this was written much later than Solomon’s time (and we can talk about that, but I’m quite convinced), then either the writer is using a literary conceit and writing as if he were Solomon or he is using the son of<\/i> form to indicate descent from the Davidic line, which of course can be a Big Deal. The phrasing king in Jerusalem<\/i> doesn’t necessarily imply king of Israel<\/i> or even King of Judah<\/i>; it could mean something like rightful king by descent, even if not actually ruling<\/i>. Or the first verse was added later by an editor who wanted to attribute the writings to the famously wise king. Anyway: the first verse is an identification that completely fails to identify. Is there a point to that? Are we beginning to hold contradictions in mind?\n
The text proper begins with the second verse, and Kohelet’s favorite word: hevel<\/i>, which the KJV calls vanity<\/i>. More language trouble! It doesn’t have anything to do with being vain in the sense of being prideful; it’s more to do with the idea of attempting something in vain, uselessly. The KJV is going directly from the Latin vanitas vanitatum<\/i>, which may be relying on the Septuagint, where it comes across as folly<\/i>, more or less. Or perhaps vanitas<\/i> has more of the connotation of emptiness<\/i> which is in the original Hebrew. It’s connected to the word for breath<\/i>. R.B.Y. Scott, in fact, translates the thing thusly:\n
Breath of a breath! (says Qoheleth). The slightest breath! All is a breath!<\/blockquote>\n
Which is kinda poetic and shit, innit, but doesn’t so much mean anything. Rami Shapiro goes elsewhere in two different translations, first choosing “Emptiness! Emptiness upon emptiness!” and in a later version “Emptying upon emptying!” H.L. Ginsberg dispenses with the metaphor entirely: “Utter futility! —said Koheleth— Utter futility! All is futile!” Translation is hard.\n
I’ll attempt to transliterate—I may do that a fair amount in this book, as I think the sound is important: havayl havalim amar kohelet havayl havalim hacol havayl<\/i>. It has a very heavy sound, doesn’t it? Yes, there are all those aitches, but all that vayl-vul-vayl-vul-vayl comes off to me as very heavy-sounding. So if we are supposed to think of breath and emptiness and vapor and incorporeality, then the sound is working against the sense, in my opinion, rather than with it. And I think if we are intended to think of emptiness and breath, the repetition works against any sense of lightness or airiness: piling breath upon breath upon breath, making an oppressive blanket of that emptiness or nothingness. And how can everything—ha-col<\/i>, the all—be nothingness?\n
I should also observe that what with the language being all sparse and ambiguous and so on, it seems perfectly plausible to read these two lines as something closer to The words of Koholet, son of King David in Jerusalem, are breaths only—he speaks but it’s all breath and breath and breath!<\/i> I’m not proposing that as a serious translation, but as a sort of warning. I’m not expecting, when we’re done, to have anything more than breath (vapor, emptiness, futility, vanity). On the other hand, the other words for breath and breathing are connected to ruach<\/I> and nephesh<\/i>, spirit and soul—are we to take hevel<\/i> as being opposite to them, or like them? Or both?\n
YHB is a both\/and kinda guy, you know. Solomonic folly, feminine masculinity, towers of emptiness, all of everything is of nothing. We’re gonna need big categories here.\n
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Which Your Humble Blogger gets through two whole verses, mostly by skipping the whole Solomon question, and also skipping that word ‘words’ at the beginning. There’s a midrash about that word, you know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[207],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scripture"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14669"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16661,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14669\/revisions\/16661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}