The Vitality of Enjoyment in Qohelet's Theological Rhetoric by Eunny P. Lee

By Eunny P. Lee

This examine explores the interaction among the commendation of delight and the injunction to worry God in Ecclesiastes. past stories have tended to envision those likely antithetical subject matters in isolation from each other. Seeing amusement and worry to be certainly correlated, in spite of the fact that, allows a clean articulation of the book’s theology. delight in lifestyles lies on the center of Qohelet’s imaginative and prescient of piety, that could be characterised as trustworthy realism, calling for an actual engagement with either the tragic and joyous dimensions of human life.

Show description

Read Online or Download The Vitality of Enjoyment in Qohelet's Theological Rhetoric PDF

Best sacred writings books

Shadow on the Steps: Time Measurement in Ancient Israel

How did the traditional Israelites view and degree time? The Hebrew Bible, the manager resource of data for Israelite time-reckoning throughout the monarchic interval (ca. a thousand 586 B. C. E. ), includes chronological facts from many alternative resources. This fabric has formerly been handled as though it have been derived from a unmarried resource and mirrored yet one procedure of time dimension.

Buddhist Sutras: Origin, Development, Transmission

This booklet deals an engrossing account either one of the beginning and improvement of the sutras and of the clergymen who braved perilous trips and mastered unusual languages so one can hold the sutras to new lands.

Rhetorical Criticism: Context, Method, and the Book of Jonah

Introduces a manner of studying and examining biblical literature

Passing Through the Gateless Barrier: Kōan Practice for Real Life

The vintage thirteenth-century choice of Zen koans with some of the most obtainable commentaries to this point, from a chinese language Zen instructor. Gateways to awakening encompass us at each second of our lives. the full function of kōan (gong’an, in chinese language) perform is to maintain us from lacking those myriad possibilities through top us to sure gates that experience frequently been powerful for individuals to entry that very good awakening.

Additional resources for The Vitality of Enjoyment in Qohelet's Theological Rhetoric

Example text

It has to do with living life to the full —with full recognition of life's travails and woes —and making the most of every God-given opportunity. One may even argue, as Johnston has done, that Ecclesiastes is in fact calling us back to "the 8 O g d e n , Qoheleth, 9 W h y b r a y , " Q o h e l e t h , P r e a c h e r of J o y , " 8 8 - 8 9 . 22. 10 O g d e n , Qoheleth, 11 R. N. W h y b r a y , Ecclesiastes 48. : E e r d m a n s , 1989), 4 6 - 6 5 . " 12 Enjoyment is indeed a vital notion in Qohelet's theological rhetoric.

Gammie, "Stoicism and anti-Stoicism in Qoheleth," HAR 9 (1985), 1 6 9 - 8 7 ; L. Schwienhorst-Schönberger, "Nicht im Menschen gründet das Glück" (Herders Biblische Studien 2; Freiberg: Herder, 1996), 251-332. 4 W. H. U. Anderson, Qoheleth and Its Pessimistic Theology, 7 2 - 7 3 , 109, 166. Introduction 33 find in an absurd world, because these can act as a narcotic of sorts that dulls the pain of existence. 5 In such ways, then, the enjoyment passages are rejected as a contradictory strain or a peripheral concern, a constant irritant within the book that obscures its real message.

73 He deliberately entices the reader to make a particular conclusion, only to frustrate and dismantle that initial conclusion. The unexpected and contradictory turns in Qohelet's argumentation, then, need not be seen as evidence of editorial tampering, or even the citation of another's views. Qohelet employs ambiguity, irony, and a rhetoric of subversion deliberately to create the experience of anomie, in order to unsettle the reader and challenge false assumptions concerning human abilities. In other words, the effect of disorientation is intended to serve a pedagogical purpose: to demonstrate that humans are granted only a fragile and tenuous existence, but are, at the same time, called to confront and take up what they are granted to the full.

Download PDF sample

Rated 4.25 of 5 – based on 13 votes