Review of Barbour, The Story of Israel in the Book of Qohelet

H-JUDAIC REVIEW:

Jennifer Barbour. The Story of Israel in the Book of Qohelet: Ecclesiastes as Cultural Memory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. xv + 225 pp. $135.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-19-965782-7.

Reviewed by Jennifer L. Koosed (Albright College)
Published on H-Judaic (April, 2013)
Commissioned by Jason Kalman

The History-Haunted Meditations of Qohelet

Jennie Barbour’s The Story of Israel in the Book of Qohelet provides a new perspective on the issue of history in Qohelet. The scholarly consensus has been that historical reference is completely absent from Qohelet, a book that does not seem to be interested in either the figures or the events of ancient Israel. Barbour challenges this consensus. She argues that “history haunts Ecclesiastes” (p. 3). Barbour is not, however, trying to revive some Jewish and Christian traditional exegesis which assumes Solomonic authorship and imposes an allegorical and historicizing interpretation on the book. Rather, Barbour proposes that the author of Qohelet (highly educated and literate) is drawing on a wealth of textual traditions and a deep cultural memory that has been shaped by the experience of the Babylonian destruction and exile. This experience, then, leaves its mark on Qohelet’s meditations as well.

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