[T]he presupposition of a speculative historical framework can make a person blind for observations, which do not fit the presupposed framework.
Redaction criticism then serves as an instrument to immunise the proposed framework against basic criticism: whatever not fits the framework is regarded as a later redactional addition. One should therefore avoid, in my view, to be too fast at hand with datings, which are not very well justified. It is better to take a step back and look open minded to the relationship between texts and to allow for observations, which might not always fit the current presupposed frameworks.
I decided in grad school that redaction criticism was nothing but a game because depending on which presuppositions were selected you could argue all sorts of nonsense.
I think that it would be very difficult to support the case that Ecclesiastes was written more recently than the Israelite captivity in Persia. If it was, then im sure it would reflect that in the subject of the various phrases made in the book. Lets also not forget that the last few hundred years prior to Christ was taken up with things like the Maccabean wars…i very much doubt Eccesiastes has indicators of any knowledge of such wars…or even the Babylonian and Persian captivity for that matter…so making the case the language appears to have Persian influences doesnt work for me. That by itself isnt enough for any kind of dating…especially when the traditional view passed onto us from early church fathers attributes the book to earlier authorship (ie king solomon). Its very difficult to ignore the Rabbinic tradition that it was written by Solomon given that the Rabbis date back to the earliest times of the nation of Israel. If we are going to start denying the historicity of cultures, then that has significant ramifications that eat away at the foundation of society itself in that no tradition may be trusted! To me, these kinds of threads have a single aim…to attack the historicity of the bible in order to avoid the ages we gain from a natural reading of language. That erodes the authenticity of the entire gospel as far as im concerned and its troubling that Christians actively seek to walk down such a pathway.
No, they don’t. The origin of rabbis was during the Exile, and it wasn’t a formal institution even in the first century.
LOL You deny the historicity of ancient Israelite culture in order to cling to YEC!
There are none so blind . . .
Ecclesiastes itself doesn’t even claim Solomon as its author; “the son of David, king in Jerusalem” was the legitimate title of any descendant of David who reigned in Jerusalem. So asking when it was actually written is a fair question – especially since it contains Aramaic language that is late, possibly after the Exile.
Then you do not understand the Gospel – its authenticity rests on the Incarnation, and our fullest knowledge of the Incarnation comes from four βίος documents from the first century. They are testimony to and characterizations of the Savior, the Word made flesh, the foundation of all scripture.