Prueba de hipótesis

The targum as a translation sets out to replace the world of BibQoh, which is characterised by injustices, uncertainties about the future, doubts about the efficacy of learning and wisdom, and one in which there seems to be little to be pleased about, since everything is depicted as hebel. This is clearly set out in the opening chapter, in which Qohelet describes the world as:

I set my mind to study and probe with wisdom all that happens under the sun. An unhappy business, that, which God gave men to be concerned with! I observed all the happenings beneath the sun, and I found that all is futile and breaking of the spirit155 (BibQoh 1: 13-14).

114 These verses are theologically problematic as they imply that the world as created by God is inherently without order or any discernible purpose. Inevitably, life itself is a negative experience and the question then is how does one compensate for this failure of creation to find some form of happiness. This is the response in the targum’s translation:

And I devoted myself to seeking instruction from God when he appeared to me in Gibeon, to try me, and to ask me what I desired of him. And I asked nothing of him except wisdom, to know the difference between good and evil, and knowledge of what was done under the sun in this world. Then I saw all the works of the wicked children of men, a bad business which God gave to the children of men to be afflicted by. I saw all the works of the children of men under the sun in this world. Behold, all is vanity and breaking of the spirit (TgQoh. 1: 13-14).

While Qohelet’s search for wisdom is wholly secular, the targum’s is totally theological – Solomon as the divinely imbued prophet becomes the ideal sage-like figure to be followed (Levine 1978: 78). God relates to man through the Torah, and by Torah man is able to reason with God and in order to understand God one had to devote oneself to selfless lifelong study.

Torah wisdom replaces secular wisdom and wisdom becomes Torah (Levine 1978: 78-9). This is an example where the targum shifts the focus of traditional wisdom and replaces it in its entirety with revelation and expressions of God’s promises to the

115 righteous. For the rabbis, the Torah contained all that man needed to know in order to comprehend life and to draw closer to God (Schechter 1961: 127-137). Rabbinical thought equates wisdom to the Law, i.e. Torah, and when TgQoh speaks of wisdom, it is always in relation to Torah wisdom. This notion of wisdom as integral and deriving from the Law/Torah has ancient roots and can exegetically be traced back to Deut. 4: 6, 30: 11-18. In an interpretation, wisdom was present as an active participant with God at the time of the world’s creation (Prov. 8: 22-30) (Moore 1970: 263-7; Schechter 1961:116).

The targumist established a direct relationship between man and God conveyed through the agency of Solomon as prophet, who is depicted as continuing in the role of a prophet by his involvement in events mentioned in the Tanakh, in this case the example from TgQoh 1: 13-14, where God spoke to Solomon in a dream at Gibeon (1Kgs. 3: 5-9). In the targum biblical history is thus connected to the present in a timeless manner.

In TgQoh the world is depicted as it ought to be. The targumist reorganised the material in the chapters and verses to align them with the rabbinic worldview of what a ‘perfect world’ in the eyes of God should be (Neusner 2003: 188-198). Where Qohelet describes the temporal conditions as he perceived them to be in a general sense to be, TgQoh presents the condition of man in this world in perfect union with God as it was in the past, present and in the future world to come: “After having served the Lord of the world, he will inherit the world to come as a reward for the works of his hand.” In a perfect world, economic and social conditions and matters of justice are frozen and endure for all time, ensuring that relationships between man and God and

116 between man and man are perfected, as they were in Eden. This is not directly mentioned in TgQoh 5:11, but the implication is one that was core to rabbinic faith. Rabbis understood wealth in terms of Torah learning as infinite and accessible to everyone, unlike property that was limited to only a few and was of limited duration. It was only lifelong devotion to Torah study and performance of righteous deeds by which individuals could earn the required rewards for access to the world to come for both regardless if one was rich or poor in life (Neusner 2003: 198-201).

The rabbinic sages maintained that, in a world without change, justice required that each person should emerge from a transaction exactly as he entered it. A perfect world – beyond time – also is world wholly at rest, in a steady state so far as wealth is concerned. …. Since the Rabbinic sages took it as their task to reveal the perfection of justice in all dimensions of the world that God made, they naturally turned to questions of a material order. The Rabbinic sages’ theology of the commonwealth, of political economy, forms the equivalent of the principle of measure for measure in establishing justice for crime and sin, but it applies to everyday affairs. Based on the viewpoint of the Rabbinic sages,’ the theology of justice and enduring stability of the world is governed by the perfection of all relationships as they existed for the people of Israel as they were in Eden at the time of the creation (Neusner 2003: 198).156

156 _{This theme also appears in TgQoh in 6: 8, where a poor man who studies the Law will be among} the righteous in Paradise; 7: 28-29 on Abraham, the perfect just man, Adam and Eve who brought sin and death into the world, an Aggadic addition to Qohelet; 9:7 on the obligations of the wealthy and their place in paradise.

117 In the rabbinical worldview, where time did not exist as a linear concept, history was regarded as timeless, and the sages and prophets are as relevant in the present as they were a thousand years ago (Neusner 2003: 180). These notions created a timeless paradigm of a perfect world from the moment of the creation that included the Torah, both oral and written, in a world that existed in a state of total perfection (ibid.).157

In TgQoh Solomon describes an idyllic past in which he “multiplied good deeds in Jerusalem,” built houses, the temple to atone for Israel, a royal palace, a conclave, porch and “a house of judgement where the wise men sit”; he planted vineyards in Yavne;158 Solomon continued by adding “so that I and the rabbis of the Sanhedrin might drink wine, and also to make libations of wine, new and old, upon the altar” (TgQoh 2 -10). TgQoh introduces the images and events from the HB and the rabbis themselves as if they had been a cast of characters who were intimately involved with the life and deeds in the story of Solomon in an unbroken narrative that included the books of 1Kings, Song of Songs, the Mishnaic interpretations and Midrashic influences. The secular nature of these passages and the self-doubt of Solomon in BibQoh is entirely altered into a religiously inspired message depicting Solomon as if he were one with the rabbis in a temple environment. Similar passages in which the targum includes additions from scripture to explain rabbinical viewpoints are found in TgQoh 3: 11–12 concerning Sheba, the son of Bichri; 4: 13-15 on Abraham the

157_{Neusner (185) provides this example from Mekhilta to R. Ishmael XXXII: I: 1-7:}

“Along these same lines, I, Qoheleth, have been king over Israel in Jerusalem” (Qoh 1: 12). This [statement was made] at the outset of the sequence of events, and why then was it stated here? It is because considerations of temporal sequence play no role in the Torah.”

158 _{1Kgs. 7: 1-12.Vineyards in the rabbinic context refers to the rows of judges who were arranged in} rows like grapevines in a vineyard (QohRab. II. 8:1). In the targum references to the drinking of wine and of eating are metaphors for Torah and doing of good deeds. See Levine (1978: 59); an early reference for this can be found in Bavli. Shab. 30b.

118 patriarch; 7: 19 – Joseph in Egypt; 7: 28-29 – Adam and Eve in Eden and Abraham; 10: 9 on Manasseh and Rabshakeh; 9: 6-17 on Jeroboam and Hezekiah; 12: 10 – 11 on Moses, the Sanhedrin, Midrashim and the Halakhot.