Volume 12, Issue 2

This essay distinguishes various interpretations of Ecclesiastes using heuristic categories that effectively map their divergent readings on the basis of how they primarily construe the central problem posed by the book. We suggest that there are roughly five broad conceptual models used by readers to answer the question, “What is Qohelet’s problem?” namely: as an epistemological, theological/ethical, political/economic, existential, and/or ontological issue. This article provides examples of each approach from both recent scholarship and the history of reception, showing that each brings certain aspects of the text to light, even as they keep other parts of the book in the dark. While we therefore recognize the value of each approach to Ecclesiastes, we especially advocate for the ontological perspective because we find that it is often overlooked or underappreciated in contemporary scholarship and because we think that it is central to a full understanding of Ecclesiastes’ teachings. This perspective sees Qohelet’s key term הבל ( hebel ) as pointing to a fundamental instability or incoherence in the nature of reality itself. We support our advocacy for this approach through readings of key texts, an exploration of relevant themes in Ecclesiastes, and engagement with various receptions of the book in literature, art, music, and film. The aims of this article, therefore, are to provide a conceptual map of the interpretation and reception of Ecclesiastes. We also advocate for the need to understand the book as a response to various problems including ontological contradictions, which may not be prevalent among contemporary interpretations but nonetheless have precedents in the book’s reception history.

Ludus Danielis is a famous piece of medieval drama that was composed in the late twelfth century by the clerics and students connected to the Beauvais Cathedral in northern France and committed to writing in the early thirteenth century. The musical drama retells the story of Daniel in the courts of Balthasar and Darius, including his experience in the lion’s den (Dan 5–6). The long-standing Christian tradition of interpreting Daniel as a prophet and even prefigurement of Christ finds new expression in the form and content of Ludus Danielis. The play has enjoyed immense scholarly attention focusing on its distinctive features, performance history, devotional impact, context amid other performance traditions, and most notably, its role as a corrective to the Feast of Fools tradition. A reexamination of how Ludus Danielis presents and interprets the biblical narrative suggests that the play served an additional purpose, responding to the theological and ecclesiological trends that shaped the period in which the play was composed, performed, and recorded. The persona of Daniel was an ideal candidate for establishing an imaginative space to help the young clerics engage those trends. The playful engagement between the source material and dramatic mechanisms established a symbolic space wherein the court tales of Daniel 5–6 became the language for negotiating the desired norms of clerical authority and personal piety. The formational playscape created by the ludic (game-like) nature of the plays empowered the young clerics to negotiate the evolving role of the subdeacon as well as the tensions between private devotion and increased ecclesial mediation, especially in the sacrament of the Eucharist. Through purposeful playfulness, Ludus Danielis utilized the person and story of Daniel to engage in instructional commentary and contemplative pilgrimage, encouraging ideal clerical identity and piety while also reinforcing the expanding mediatory role of the clergy.

Almost all contemporary commentaries claim that in 1 Timothy 4:13 Paul urges Timothy to read from Scripture and teach during worship services. This essay traces how this interpretation arose in the early modern period and became established in the 19th century. From antiquity to the Reformation, however, 1 Tim 4:13 was understood without exception to mean that Paul was urging Timothy to read Scripture for himself and to teach on that basis. This understanding of 1 Timothy 4:13 can be easily contextualized within ancient ideas of character formation. It seems much more plausible than the interpretation that is common today.

Scholars have maintained that the first early modern discovery of Marius Victorinus’s Pauline commentaries took place somewhere around 1630. That year, Jacques Sirmond announced his discovery of various commentaries on the Pauline corpus attributed to Victorinus (ca. 280/290–365), the elderly scholar and convert to Christianity mentioned by Augustine in his Confessions . This study, however, invites scholars to go beyond the traditional view about the first discovery of Victorinus and consider the contribution of Jean de Gaigny (d. 1549). Jean discovered Victorinus’s Commentary on Galatians nearly 100 years before Sirmond. The Parisian scholar utilized this commentary of Victorinus mainly to respond to the challenges posed by Erasmus of Rotterdam’s new Latin translation of the New Testament. Because of this discovery, Jean accomplished many firsts with respect to Victorinus from being the first author in Christian history to quote from one of his commentaries on the Pauline Epistles to reintroducing his exegetical work on Galatians to all of Europe.