Commentary: On Ecclesiastes (Arabic)

Writing in tenth-century Jerusalem, Salmon ben Yerūḥīm (Sulaymān ibn Ruḥaym) used his commentary on Ecclesiastes to reflect on themes like ascetism and eschatology; the latter concept was particularly central to Karaites of his generation. In the first of these excerpts, he considers the warning of the author of Ecclesiastes (traditionally considered to be King Solomon) to avoid excessive righteousness. Salmon understands this guidance to refer to practices that are too demanding to be carried out. God, he argues, would never impose an obligation that cannot be upheld. In the second, Salmon polemicizes against the study of philosophy, or “foreign wisdom.” Salmon’s denunciation of philosophy is perhaps the most extreme of those preserved from his Karaite community. Still, he, like other Karaites, adopted many aspects of rationalist kalām, in particular as developed by the Islamic Mu‘tazilites, who often deployed philosophical arguments in the service of theology. The word Allah in Arabic means “God”; while it is rendered in this excerpt as “Allah,” in other texts in this volume, it has been translated by us simply as “God.”