Qoheleth [Ecclesiastes]: First & Greatest Jewish Philosopher c. 250 BCE

In this last treatise to be admitted into the Hebrew canon, Ecclesiastes, c. 90 CE at the Council of Jabneh (Jamnia), written c. 250 BCE, we have the scholarship of a profound philosopher.  It has been mired and disfigured by the scribal tradition with vulgar Aramaisms, glosses, & ignorant corrections.

After four centuries of French Biblical and Oriental scholarship, it is now possible to restore the text to its original composition as this great cynic philosopher wrote it.

We still require a competent English translation of the original text.  Using our modern pagination numbering scheme (chapter & verses) for its authentic passages, one can understand the brilliant philosophical mind of its anonymous author.  He was  a scholar of the first-rate order; a profound, passionate, intense, dominating and lucid Semitic mind.

In the Semitic mind, unlike the Indo-European mind, one's mind and heart (emotional nature) are intimately conjoined.  In its logical presentation there are no middle terms (as in Aristotelian logic or syllogisms).  It was a difficult book for the ancient Jews.  It is recorded in the Talmud [Shabbath 30 b] "The Sages wanted to hide the book of Qoheleth because its words dispute each other."

Here is our text restored without priestly scribal contaminations:

1: 12-14, 18, 15-17
2: 1-25
3: 1-2, 9-15, 18-22
4: 1, [3:16], 2-4, 7-8, 13-16
5: 9-19
6: 1-6, 10-12
7: 13-17, 23-26a, 27-29
8: 9-10, 14-17
9: 1-16
10: 5-7, 14b
11: 5, 7-9a, 10
12: 1-5a, 6, 5b, 7a, 8b, 13a  [The End]

The vulgar additions, expansions & glosses are:

a.)  Corrections:  2: 26a, 3:17, 7:26b [gloss or correction], 8:11-13, 11:9b, 12:14;

b.)  Misplaced Verse Lines:  2: 26b,  3:16-17 (placed after 4:1),  12:5b  (placed after 12:6);

c.)  Glosses:  4:5-6, 4:9-12, 4:17--5:8, 6:7-9, 7:1-12, 7:18-22, 8:1-8, 9:17--10:4, 10:8-14a, 10:15--11:4,6  &  12:11.

These Commentators are labeled as the 'Wisdom Commentator', the 'Pious Commentator' and   the  'Maxim Commentator.'  Without these commentators, this text would not have been added to the Hebrew Ketubim [Gr. Hagiographa] or "writings".