Journal of Biblical Literature - Society of Biblical Literature

Book Reviews
Jews and Greeks, the presence of Greeks in Palestine, and the use of the Greek language.
However, as the book progresses, the central focus of what Hellenism signifies
for Jews seems to be (or shift to?) the establishment of a bourgeoisie class, and a religious
development involving both skepticism and philosophical enlightenment.
Crisis and Controversy
The first two sections of the book, which lay out the evidence of Jewish and Greek
contacts, provide in many ways the explanation for the responses discussed in the
remainder of the book. In section III, entitled “The Encounter and Conflict between
Palestinian Judaism and the Spirit of the Hellenistic Age,” various reactions from Jewish
groups to the changing socio-political situation are described from the evidence
attested in the literature of the time. Perhaps central to this section, and certainly
essential for the discussion, is the interpretation of Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes) and Ben
Sira. Dating Qoheleth to the Hellenistic period, Hengel notes the movement away
from timeless sapiential literature to a much more personal, critical form of observation
in the person of the author. Along with “Hasidism” and apocalyptic, Qoheleth represents
a universalistic and rational mind. Greek thought is here identified with
rationality. Hengel was by no means the first to place Qoheleth in the Hellenistic
period—Heinrich Graetz had even dated it to the time of Herod the Great (Kohelet
tlhq oder der Salomonische Prediger: Übersetzt und kritisch erläutert [Leipzig:
Winter, 1871])—and the debate continues whether it should be dated to the Persian
(e.g., C.-L. Seow, Ecclesiastes: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary
[AB 18C; New York: Doubleday, 1997], 38) or Hellenistic periods (Dominic Rudman,
Determinism in the Book of Ecclesiastes [JSOTSup 316; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic
Press, 2001]). The importance of Qoheleth, which seems to typify a blend of Jewish
and Hellenistic thought (in Hebrew garb), is that it allows Hengel to raise a critical
question (p. 128): Under the influence of the Greek spirit, was not the criticism of traditional
wisdom introduced by Qoheleth extended within it to become a criticism of
Jewish religion in general? Hengel identified “a spiritual crisis of early Hellenism”
(p. 127) in which the traditional Greek belief in the efficacy of divine righteousness was
replaced by a belief in an abstract noncommittal fate (pp. 121–25). He points to poets,
comedians and tragedians, none of whom of course is to be taken at face value or as
representative of more popular belief. It seems that it is the intellectual movements
that most interest Hengel.
The interest in intellectual movements is made clear by Hengel’s surprising acceptance
of Michael I. Rostovtzeff’s Marxist theories of the ancient economy. Qoheleth’s
acquaintance with Greek criticism of religion and Egyptian belief in fate Hengel
attributes as having been communicated by Ptolemaic officials, merchants, and soldiers:
“In this way Koheleth encountered not the school opinions of the philosophers, but the
popular views of the Greek ‘bourgeoisie’” (p. 125). In introducing the “bourgeoisie” into
the discussion in the first section of the book (which deals with trade and economic contacts
with Greeks), the Marxian terminology is brought into the thesis on religion: “The
‘bourgeoisie,’ i.e. the well-to-do stratum of society who lived off their capital in the form
of land or other investments (cf. Koh 11,1f.), was the really dominant force of the Hellenistic
world.”
Qoheleth was one of these and therefore did not fully abandon his religion. Ben
Sira inaugurates the new era of critical repudiation and is presented in the context of
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