Solomon's World View

[Olde Tymer]

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Ecclesiastes is the Bible's fun book because it's chock full of rational thinking
instead of heavenly revelations. Ecclesiastes requires very little interpretation as
anybody who's been around the block a time or two can easily relate to it.

Solomon composed his comments from the perspective of a philosophical man
who's understanding of life and the hereafter is moderated by empirical evidence
and the normal round of human experience. It's a handy book of the Bible for
showing that not all religious people are kooks with their heads in the clouds and
unable to see things as they are through the eyes of normal people.

* According to Matt 12:42, Luke 11:31, John 1:1-14, and Col 2:3; Christ trumps
Solomon, so beware of using proof texts from Ecclesiastes to refute, moderate,
and/or water down Christ's teachings.

In addition: Christ is the voice of God (John 3:34, John 8:26, John 8:28, John
12:49, John 14:24) whereas there is not the slightest textual evidence in the book
of Ecclesiastes that Solomon was anybody's voice but his own when he wrote it.

To my knowledge, Solomon had never seen the afterlife for himself, viz: he wasn't
an expert witness; whereas Christ had seen the afterlife for himself and knew what
he was talking about.

● John 3:31-32 . . He who comes from above is above all, he who is of the earth is
from the earth and speaks of the earth. He who comes from heaven is above all.
What He has seen and heard, of that he bears witness.

Christ is also highly recommended, whereas to my knowledge, Solomon isn't.

● Matt 17:5 . . This is my Son, the beloved, whom I have approved; listen to him.

So then, when encountering remarks in the book of Ecclesiastes that are out of step
with Christ's teachings in the New Testament; my unsolicited spiritual counseling is
to go with the wisdom of the supreme being's son.

● John 8:12 . . I am the light of the world. He that follows me will by no means
walk in darkness, but will possess the light of life.

FAQ: Doesn't the apostle Paul say that all Scripture is God breathed?

REPLY: There is a difference between inspiration and dictation.

Solomon was no doubt inspired to record his personal world views in the Bible, but
we shouldn't assume his world views quote God word-for-word the way Christ does.

● John 3:34 . . For he is sent by God; he speaks God's words, for God's spirit is
upon him without measure or limit.

● John 12:49 . . I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, He
gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak.

● John 14:24 . .The word which you hear is not mine, but the Father's who sent
me.

Buen Camino (Pleasant Journey)
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[Olde Tymer]

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● Ecc 1:1 . .The words of Koheleth son of David, king in Jerusalem.

Koheleth is apparently a transliteration rather than a translation. The Hebrew word
is qoheleth (ko-heh'-leth) which means an assembly gatherer (i.e. a lecturer). A
qoheleth isn't a mechanic on a factory assembly line, but rather, someone who
assembles a group together for a speech, a seminar, a sermon, or classroom
lecture.

Christ was a koheleth. Just about everywhere he went, Jesus set up a soap box and
drew crowds.

The lecturer obviously isn't female because Koheleth was a son of David and a king
in Jerusalem. Sons and kings are eo ipso male.

Tradition accredits Ecclesiastes to David's son Solomon, the brightest intellectual of
his day because of the abundance of his God-given wisdom. None of the other
descendants of David ever matched Solomon's intellect. He may not have been
much of a soldier, but Solomon had no equals in matters of scholarship.

"The Lord endowed Solomon with wisdom and discernment in great measure, with
understanding as vast as the sands on the seashore. Solomon's wisdom was
greater than the wisdom of all the Kedemites and than all the wisdom of the
Egyptians. He was the wisest of all men: [wiser] than Ethan the Ezrahite, and
Heman, Chalkol, and Darda the sons of Mahol. His fame spread among all the
surrounding nations.

. . He composed three thousand proverbs, and his songs numbered one thousand
and five. He discoursed about trees, from the cedar in Lebanon to the hyssop that
grows out of the wall; and he discoursed about beasts, birds, creeping things, and
fishes. Men of all peoples came to hear Solomon's wisdom, [sent] by all the kings of
the earth who had heard of his wisdom." (1Kgs 5:9-14)

Solomon's education would most likely be categorized as Liberal Arts in our day;
which is a pretty broad field of study consisting of a variety of subjects.

● Ecc 1:2-3 . . Utter futility!-- said Koheleth --Utter futility! All is futile! What real
value is there for a man in all the gains he makes beneath the sun?

He has a point. What does it benefit people "beneath the sun" (viz: in this world of
ours) to amass a fortune, build an empire, accumulate knowledge, possessions,
education, accolades, achievements, and experience when they're only going to die
and lose every last bit of it?

Approaching the end of his life; actor Burt Reynolds once remarked that the only
thing he regretted was not spending more of his money.

Here's a humorous epitaph that quite says it all:

Here lies John Racket,
In his wooden jacket.
He kept neither horses nor mules.
He lived like a hog,
And died like a dog;
And left his money to fools.
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[Olde Tymer]

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● Ecc 1:4 . . One generation goes, another comes, but the Earth remains the same
forever.

It's humiliating to realize that a mindless lump of granite with an IQ of zero, and
whose personal accomplishments amount to absolutely nothing, will easily outlive
the finest minds and the most energetic movers and shakers who ever existed.

The rock of Gibraltar, for example, was here before Plato, Alexander the Great,
Darwin, Beethoven, Einstein, Eli Whitney, Edwin Hubble, Jonas Salk, and Steve
Jobs; and the rock of Gibraltar was still be here after they all died. It will still be
here after you and I are dead too. Shakespeare once said all the world's a stage.
He was so right. Actors come and go, but the stage is always there; ready for a
new cast.

It's just not fair. People are much smarter, more sophisticated, and far more
valuable than anything on the planet. But the planet itself-- mute, ignorant, and
impersonal --endures forever; while its superiors die and drop off at the rate of
+/- 7,000 souls every twenty-four hours just in the USA alone.

In the grand scheme of things, Man's tenure on the planet is but for a fleeting
moment; then he's gone and forgotten; washed away. For the vast majority of
people, it will be as though they were never here at all.

● Ecc 1:5 . .The sun rises, and the sun sets-- and glides back to where it rises.

Sounds like Orphan Annie-- "The Sun-ull come owwwwt too-maw-row. Betcher
bottum doll-ler that too-maw-rohhhhh, thair-ull be Sun." (chuckle) Annie has it
pegged. Maybe clouds block the Sun from view now and then, but the clouds can
never stop the Sun from coming up; nor stop it from going down either. The Sun
always comes up, and it always goes down-- there's always day, and there's always
night

● Ecc 1:6 . . Southward blowing, turning northward, ever turning blows the wind;
on its rounds the wind returns.

Solomon perceived that winds are cyclonic; and he's right. The Earth's air currents
don't move straight ahead like waves roaring in on the beach. No, they circulate.
High pressure areas move air into low pressure areas. And the winds never blow
just once. They keep coming back to blow all over again.

● Ecc 1:7 . . All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full; to the place
[from] which they flow the streams flow back again.

Solomon was pretty doggone savvy about hydrology. It's true. All streams flow
towards the sea (duh! gravity makes water flow downhill, and most landmasses are
above the level of the sea), but the water doesn't stay there. It returns to the land
masses again via evaporation and snow, and rain, and hail, in a perpetual cycle.

● Ecc 1:8 . . All such things are wearisome: no man can ever state them; the eye
never has enough of seeing, nor the ear enough of hearing.

Science is fun. But there is just too much for one man to learn in his lifetime. Even
those who specialize in only one branch, like astronomy, or biology, or chemistry,
never really get it all. They are ever grasping for more knowledge, but it eludes
them. Then they die and someone else comes along to pick up where they left off
and continue the search.

A new 9.7 billion-dollar space telescope, said to be many times more powerful than
the Hubble, dubbed the James Webb Space Telescope (a.k.a. JWSP) was launched
in 2021. What for? Only because Man's eyes never have enough seeing, and his
ears never have enough hearing. He presses on for more and more knowledge
because he just has to know. The quest for knowledge becomes the entire reason
and motivation for missions like the JWSP. It was being built and launched simply
for the purpose of discovery.

Nobel Prize winner, author of several best-selling books, and recipient of at least a
dozen honorary degrees, physicist Steven Weinberg (who views religion as an
enemy of science) in his book "The First Three Minutes" wrote: "The more the
universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless. But if there is no
solace in the fruits of our research, there is at least some consolation in the
research itself . . The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things
that lifts human life a little above the level of a farce and gives it some of the grace
of tragedy."
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[Olde Tymer]

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● Ecc 1:9 . . Only that shall happen which has happened, only that occur which has
occurred; there is nothing new beneath the Sun.

Solomon noticed that nature has yet to reinvent itself; and yet to break its own
habits. The tide always comes in, and it always goes out. The Sun always rises and
it always sets-- there's always a day followed by a night. The wind blows past us,
and eventually returns to do it again. In the Spring, leaves appear on trees, and in
Autumn, they die and drop off-- every year. In the Winter it's cooler, in the
Summer it's warmer-- always.

It rains one day, it clears; and another day the rains return to do it all over again.
Every year in the woods, little frogs lay eggs in vernal pools. Their pollywogs grow
into more frogs who in turn will lay their own eggs in the very same vernal pools
the following year. Birds fly south for the Winter, and birds fly north for the
Summer

Every 27.3217 Earth days the moon completes one of its own sidereal days, and
every 29.5307 Earth days it completes one of its own lunar months; the meanwhile
always showing us pretty much the very same face; very little of the other side. For
twelve months, the Sun appears to travel along the ecliptic through each of the
constellations of the Zodiac. When it gets back to the Vernal Equinox, does it then
change course and take a new path? No. It will go right back through every one of
those very same twelve signs all over again; the meanwhile tracing the very same
analemma every time.

While my wife and I were gazing at a planetary alignment of Jupiter, Saturn, Venus,
Mars, and Mercury some time ago, it occurred to me that I was looking up at a
universe virtually the same as the one that the Egyptians observed during
construction of the Pyramids. They saw the very same stars, and the very same
five naked-eye planets more than 4,000 years ago.

Political climates, wars, disease, economic ups and downs, death and life-- none of
that has influenced the circuits of those five planets. They methodically, silently,
and tirelessly go about their business indifferent to Man's problems; constantly
circling the Sun and haven't changed their behavior one single bit since the day
God told Abraham to try counting the stars. He saw the same Pleiades that we see
today; and the very same constellation of Orion.

Through our Nikon FieldScope, we saw four of Jupiter's largest moons: Io, Callisto,
Europa, and Ganymede. Those very same four moons were circling Jupiter on the
night that Galileo discovered them with his crude 20x telescope in 1609 AD. Can
you guess what those moons were doing 400 years ago back in Galileo's day? Yes;
they were doing the very same thing they're doing now: orbiting Jupiter. And can
you guess what Jupiter was doing in Galileo's day? That’s right; the very same
thing it does now: orbiting the Sun. Nature is truly in a rut.

● Ecc 1:10-11 . . Sometimes there is a phenomenon of which they say: Look, this
one is new!-- no, it occurred long since, in ages that went by before us. The earlier
ones are not remembered; so too those that will occur later will no more be
remembered than those that will occur at the very end.

When Man discovers something new in nature, it’s best to keep in mind that the
new thing he discovered didn't come into existence the day he found out about it.
No, it was there all along. He just didn't know about it yet. Like coal and uranium.
Did Man invent those? No. Did he invent petroleum? Did he invent tectonic plates?
Did he invent galaxies? Did he invent quasars? Did he invent genes? Did he invent
DNA? Did he invent electromagnetic waves? No. Did he invent electricity? No. Did
he invent gravity? Did he invent magnetism? Did he invent molecules? No, No, No,
No. All those things are discoveries, not inventions.

It's true that Man often manipulates nature to produce things like super sweet corn,
lasers, penicillin, plastic, cardboard, aluminum foil, gasoline, and nitroglycerine. But
left to itself, nature rarely produces anything new because if there's one thing
nature dearly loves, it's routine; and when those routines are disturbed, then we
get things like Covid-19, E.coli 0157-H7, climate change, ozone holes, air, soil, and
water pollution, habitat destruction, artificial boys and girls, and endangered species.
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