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Old Groans and New Songs Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes By: Frederick Charles Jennings (1847-1948) |
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AND NEW SONGS BEING Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes
by F. C. JENNINGS, NEW YORK.
Glasgow: PICKERING & INGLIS, PRINTERS & PUBLISHERS, The Publishing Office, 73 Bothwell Street. LONDON: S. BAGSTER & SONS, LTD., 15 Paternoster Row, E.C
1920
PREFACE. The chief object of a word of preface to the following notes is that
the reader may not expect from them more, or other, than is intended.
They are the result of meditations not so much of a critical as a
devotional character on the book, in the regular course of private
morning readings of the Scriptures meditations which were jotted down
at the time, and the refreshment and blessing derived from which, I
desired to share with my fellow believers. Some salient point of each
chapter has been taken and used as illustrative of what is conceived as
the purpose of the book. As month by month passed, however, the
subject opened up to such a degree that at the end, one felt as if
there were a distinct need entirely to re write the earlier chapters.
It is, however, sent forth in the same shape as originally written; the
reader then may accompany the writer, and share with him the delight at
the ever new beauties in the landscape that each turn of the road, as
it were, unexpectedly laid out before him. There is one point, however, that it may be well to look at here a
little more closely and carefully than has been done in the body of the
book, both on account of its importance and of the strong attack that
the ecclesiastical infidelity of the day has made upon it: I refer to
its authorship. To commence with the strongest position of the attack on the Solomon
authorship necessarily the strongest, for it is directly in the field
of verbal criticism it is argued that because a large number of words
are found in this book, found elsewhere alone in the post exilian
writers, (as Daniel or Nehemiah,) therefore the author of the book must
surely be post exilian too. It would be unedifying, and is happily
unnecessary, to review this in detail with a literature so very
limited as are the Hebrew writings cotemporary with Solomon: these few,
dealing with other subjects, other ideas, necessitating therefore
another character of words, it takes no scholar to see that any
argument derived from this must necessarily be taken with the greatest
caution. Nay, like all arguments of infidelity, it is a sword easily
turned against the user. As surely as the valleys lie hid in shadow
long after the mountain tops are shining in the morning sun, so surely
must we expect evidences of so elevated a personality as the wise king
of Israel, to show a fuller acquaintance with the language of his
neighbors; and employ, when they best suited him, words from such
vocabularies words which would not come into general use for many a
long day; indeed until sorrow, captivity, and shame, had done the same
work for the mass, under the chastening Hand of God, as abundant
natural gifts had done for our wise and glorious author. Thus the argument of Zöckler "the numerous Aramaisms (words of Syriac
origin) in the book are among the surest signs of its post exile
origin" is really turned against himself. Were such Aramaisms
altogether lacking, we might well question whether the writer were
indeed that widely read, eminently literary, gloriously intellectual
individual of whom it is said, "his wisdom excelled the children of the
East country and all the wisdom of Egypt, for he was wiser than all
men." Surely, that Solomon shows he was acquainted with words other
than his own Hebrew, and made use of such words when they best suited
his purpose, is only what common sense would naturally look for. There
is no proof whatever that the words themselves were of late date.
Christian scholars have examined them one by one as carefully, and
certainly at least as conscientiously, as their opponents; and show us,
in result, that the words, although not familiar in the Hebrew
vernacular, were in widely current use either in the neighboring
Persian or in that family of languages Syriac and Chaldaic of which
Hebrew was but a member... Continue reading book >>
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