コーヘレスにおける智慧

Abstract

The Book of Qoheleth is quite unique in the Old Testament literature in that we can find in it a genuine philosophical thinking. Qoheleth observes that regular cycles repeat themselves in nature and things happen to human beings without any regard to their moral purposes and achievements. He concludes therefrom that things happen exactly at the times when they should happen. This conception of kairos or ‛êth is basic to his philosophy. Though he also uses another term, translated by the Septuagint as chronos, he is not interested in the abstract-objective conception of time. He is concerned rather with concrete ‘points of time’ when things happen to human beings. Man as a free being with his sense of values finds himself thrown into an indifferent environment. As such a being he becomes aware of some power or will utterly incomprehensible to him, when he has learned by experience that things happen without any regard to his desires, ideals, or purposes. This incomprehensible power or will is the God of Qoheleth. So this God is a distant deus absconditus, yet this conception of God is nevertheless very important to Qoheleth's interpretation of human existence. Man is born to live his limited life on earth, then to die. None can escape this fate, but God also has given man the capacity to enjoy life as a result of daily labour. All that man has to do is to accept the joy of life together with the fate of death and other happenings. Wisdom is unsearchable; but the very admission of its unsearchableness is the only condition on which human desires and efforts ending in despair could de changed into the enjoyment of one's workaday life. Therein lies the negative wisdom of Qoheleth.