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The Politics of Pessimism in Ecclesiastes: A Social ... Flipbook PDF
This review was published by RBL 2013 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a subscri
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RBL 02/2013 Sneed, Mark R. The Politics of Pessimism in Ecclesiastes: A SocialScience Perspective Society of Biblical Literature Ancient Israel and Its Literature 12 Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2012. Pp. xvi + 341. Paper. $41.95. ISBN 9781589836105.
Robert Williamson Jr. Hendrix College Conway, Arkansas With this book Mark Sneed has made an important contribution to the study of the book of Ecclesiastes. Employing a social-sciences perspective, Sneed rejects “ideational approaches” to that view Qoheleth as an isolated thinker or existential philosopher, insisting that his writings both arise from and address his social situation as a sage in Ptolemaic Judah. Sneed argues that Qoheleth’s rhetoric undermines the overrationalized views of traditional wisdom, replacing them with an antirational turn toward skepticism, pessimism, and the fear of an inscrutable and capricious God. Together these rhetorical strategies provide a theological rationale for the scribal retainer class to serve the ruling elite of Ptolemaic Judah while doing nothing about the economic oppression of their own people. The book is described as a “heavily revised” version of Sneed’s 1990 Drew University dissertation (xi). It does still retain some of the character of a dissertation, most notably the two-chapter review of literature (3–73) that painstakingly situates Sneed’s argument in previous scholarship. On the whole, though, the book reads as the careful work of the senior scholar that Sneed is today, incorporating the arguments of his several important articles on Qoheleth as well as thoroughly updating the bibliography to include recent developments in the field.
This review was published by RBL 2013 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a subscription to RBL, please visit http://www.bookreviews.org/subscribe.asp.
Sneed’s own argument begins in chapters 3–4, which situate Qoheleth’s thought within the sociohistorical context of Ptolemaic Judah. He argues that Qoheleth belongs to a “retainer class” of scribes attached to the Judean aristocracy but not truly aristocratic in its own right. This social location results in a “status inconsistency” for Qoheleth and his students, who are able to recognize the oppression of the lower classes yet remain vested in the interests of the aristocracy (141). Sneed insists that Qoheleth should be read as performing a positive social function for this scribal class rather than as a purely negative reaction to the social situation or as the existential musings of a solitary genius. While Sneed makes his argument specific to the context of Ptolemaic Judah, he does not conclusively demonstrate that Qoheleth belongs to that period. Seow and others have made the case that Qoheleth belongs to the Persian rather than Hellenistic periods, and Sneed does not effectively reject this position. Rather, following Rudman, he simply notes that the terms Seow identifies as specific to the Persian-period are in fact “common to both the Persian and Hellenistic eras” (30 n. 68). Sneed essentially adopts the consensus position, demonstrating how the book fits plausibly into that context without conclusively demonstrating that it does belong there. Nonetheless, Sneed’s argument could work equally well for the Persian period, so his thesis as a whole is not undermined if one prefers Seow’s dating of the book. In chapter 5 Sneed undertakes what he calls a “synchronic (literary) reading” of Qoheleth. However, Sneed does not engage in a close literary reading, generally following the NRSV’s translation and rarely treating either translational or interpretive issues in individual passages. Rather, the strength of Sneed’s argument is his ability to frame Qoheleth within the broad sociohistorical circumstances of his day, demonstrating how the book arises from and addresses that context. In that light, Sneed’s chapter on literary issues focuses on the meaning of the word הבלand its function in the book. His primary concern is to destabilize Fox’s “existentialist” reading of Qoheleth (see especially the section entitled “Qohelet—No Modern Existentialist!”). Sneed insists that Qoheleth’s use of הבלis “hyperbolic” and “rhetorical,” intending to “shock readers and radically disorient them” in order to deconstruct the values of traditional wisdom and replace them with an antirational, carpe diem ethic (172). In the following chapters Sneed works out the details of this general overview, focusing on Qoheleth’s view of God, his pessimism, and his skepticism. He offers a compelling interpretation of Qoheleth’s negative view of God as a proactive solution to the problem of evil, which Qoheleth dissolves by giving up any claim to God’s benevolence or justice: “There is evil. God is omnipotent (and omniscient). But God is unjust (by human standards, but mortals cannot challenge his sovereignty). Or God is just but not by human standards” (185). This interpretation allows Sneed to retain the authenticity of
This review was published by RBL 2013 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a subscription to RBL, please visit http://www.bookreviews.org/subscribe.asp.
Qoheleth’s statements about God’s judgment alongside his insistence that the world is unjust (so, e.g., Qoh 3:16–17). For Sneed, Qoheleth’s conception of God as capricious and inscrutable “is directly related to his irrational reaction to the over-rationalization of the wisdom tradition” (227). Here Sneed follows Weber’s view of Judaism as moving from an early, magical stage toward a highly rationalized later stage in which “God began to be perceived as a benevolent and merciful deity who had entered into a covenant with the Israelite people exclusively” (217). In the wisdom texts, Sneed finds this tendency toward rationalization particularly in the “doctrine of retribution,” which claims that certain behaviors result in predictable outcomes. Qoheleth’s depiction of God as capricious and inscrutable undermines this controlled view of the world. Sneed argues that rather than being a late, Hellenized view, Qoheleth’s appeal to a capricious deity represents a return to “an older, more primitive concept of God … similar to the early angry, jealous war God who was primarily focused on divine honor, glory, and preeminence” (227). Sneed’s dependence on Weber’s view of Judaism as developing from older “magical” forms to later rationalized forms such as wisdom and legal codes seems difficult to sustain, given developments in our understanding of the origins of Israelite religion and the complexities of dating biblical texts and traditions. Sneed’s argument that Qoheleth represents a “fundamentally religious” turn toward irrational and fear-based religion does merit consideration as a corrective to the common view that Qoheleth was a secularist. However, his assertion that this fear-based religion represents a return to Judaism’s “core and essence” in contrast to the overrationalized wisdom and legal traditions seems overly schematic and generally unfounded (281). Preferable is Sneed’s more modest claim that Qoheleth’s appeal to the irrational represents a response to traditional wisdom’s inability to account for the sociohistorical realities of the Ptolemaic period. He argues that the subjugation of Israel during and after the exile disrupted the traditional relationship of righteousness and reward, rendering the values of traditional wisdom inadequate to Qoheleth’s time. Qoheleth challenge this rationalization of the tradition by deconstructing the rationalized categories such as righteous/wicked, wise/fool upon which traditional wisdom’s rationalizations were based, replacing them with the antirational appeal to fear God and enjoy life. One of Sneed’s most compelling arguments concerns the positive role of pessimism in Qoheleth’s rhetoric. In keeping with his sociological approach, Sneed argues that Qoheleth’s pessimism “should be viewed positively and functionally and not negatively or pathologically as most scholars have done” (252). Sneed argues that Qoheleth employs pessimism to lower his students’ expectations about the world and human capacity to
This review was published by RBL 2013 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a subscription to RBL, please visit http://www.bookreviews.org/subscribe.asp.
change it. The view that the world is unpredictable and human efforts ultimately futile ratifies the status quo even while recognizing its injustices. Functionally, then, Qoheleth’s pessimism “assuaged any class guilt [his students] might have felt in that they themselves enjoyed comfortable lives while their poorer compatriots suffered terribly. Thus, it helped the members of the scribal guild to feel better both about their vocational collaboration with the Ptolemies and about the dominated status of their people” (279). For Sneed, this positive function of the book explains why it was preserved by Qoheleth’s students, though its ultimate preservation in the biblical canon results from a fundamental misunderstanding of what Qoheleth means by “fear of God,” beginning with the pious glossator of 12:13–14 (255–77). Ultimately, it seems that Sneed is arguing for the importance of Qoheleth for contemporary religious communities, though this interest remains in the background for most of the book. In the closing paragraphs Sneed compares the rationalization of the wisdom tradition in the exilic period to the tendency toward secularism in our own society. He bemoans that Calvinism has “led to our modern, secular world, where religion has been forced to take a back seat to the dominance of science and technology” (280). Whereas many have seen Qoheleth as part of that secularizing trend, Sneed argues that Qoheleth calls for a return to an antirational faith based in fearful reverence for an inscrutable God. In the end, Sneed has made an important contribution to the study of Qoheleth, insisting that the book be interpreted as arising from and speaking to its Ptolemaic sociohistorical context. In particular, he offers radical reinterpretations of Qoheleth’s skepticism, pessimism, and view of God, arguing that they perform a positive function for Qoheleth and his students. This book should be considered required reading for those interested in the book of Qoheleth and Israelite wisdom literature more generally.
This review was published by RBL 2013 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a subscription to RBL, please visit http://www.bookreviews.org/subscribe.asp.