Thomas Bolin, «Rivalry and Resignation: Girard and Qoheleth on the Divine-Human Relationship», Vol. 86 (2005) 245-259
This article looks at the repeated gnomic phrase in the Book
of Qoheleth, "All is vanity and a chasing after wind" (NRSV) and reads it as a
disjunctive parallelism in which the terms lbh
and xwr denote mortality and the divine spirit,
respectively, thus showing the sense of the phrase to be, "All is mortal, but
strives for immortality". Using René Girard’s concept of mimetic rivalry
clarifies this reading of the proverb, and shows it to be a concise expression
of a major theme in the Book of Qoheleth, viz., the author’s thoughts on the
difference between humanity and God, understood as paradoxical relationship
based on both similarity and difference between humans and the divine. More
importantly, Girard helps to understand more deeply how and why Qoheleth views
human proximity with the divine as the cause of conflict and pain in human life.
Because this tension is also evident in numerous other biblical and
extra-biblical texts, caution must be exercised, in referring to the Book of
Ecclesiastes as a "radical" or "heterodox" writing.
256 Thomas Bolin
Gilgamesh and Adapa deal with the paradox of human wisdom, which
gives us an awareness of the divine, and of human mortality, which
keeps us from becoming divine. To put it according to Girard’s
thought, these myths express and resolve the double bind involved
both in being like the gods and in being forever their servants.
Gilgamesh learns, through his fruitless and belligerent attempt to gain
immortality, that it is a prerogative reserved by the gods for themselves
alone. Siduri in the Old Babylonian Version, as well as Utnaphishtim
in the Standard Version express this. Gilgamesh learns this knowledge
after extensive interaction with divine powers — Humbaba, Ishtar, the
Bull of Heaven, Siduri, and Utnapishtim. Put another way, Gilgamesh
exists in a state of internal mediation with the divine, and so attempts
to usurp the object, i.e., immortality, by means of force. The
knowledge that Gilgamesh gains through his epic journey beyond the
rim of the world is that he may not have the object of his desire. His
return to Uruk, and death, constitutes establishment of a state of
external mediation in which the immortal life of the gods is placed
forever beyond his reach (46). Moreover, this awareness of his own
limitations is what, for the author of the Standard Version’s prologue,
constitutes Gilgamesh’s wisdom.
Similarly, Adapa, who is possessed with great wisdom, infringes
upon the realm of the gods when he curses the wind. When summoned
to the palace of Anu, again a state of internal mediation in which the
distance between humanity and the gods is greatly reduced, he is
——————
myth as related to this social function, insofar as myth disguises the absence of
the gods by the language of transcendence. In this regard, see P. VEYNE, Did the
Greeks Believe in Their Myths? An Essay on the Constitutive Imagination
(Chicago 1988); B. LINCOLN, Theorizing Myth. Narrative, Ideology, and Scholar-
ship (Chicago 1999) 3-43.
(46) W. MORAN, “The Epic of Gilgamesh: A Document of Ancient Human-
ismâ€, Bulletin of the Canadian Society for Mesopotamian Studies 22 (1991) 15-
22; reprinted in The Most Magic Word (ed. R HENDEL) (Washington 2002) 5-20;
T. JACOBSEN, The Treasures of Darkness. A History of Mesopotamian Religion
(New Haven 1976) 195-219. On the relationship between Qoheleth and The Epic
of Gilgamesh, see C. UEHLINGER, “Qohelet im Horizont mesopotamischer,
levantinischer und ägyptischer Weisheitsliteratur der persischen und
hellenistischen Zeitâ€, Das Buch Kohelet, 180-92; J.Y.-S. PAHK, “Qohelet e le
tradizioni sapienziali del Vicino Oriente Anticoâ€, Il Libro del Qohelet.
Tradizione, redazione, teologia (eds. G. BELLIA - A. PASSARO) (Milan 2001) 117-
143; W. LAMBERT, “Some New Babylonian Wisdom Literatureâ€, Wisdom in
Ancient Israel, 30-42; J. DE SAVIGNAC, “La Sagesse du Qôhéléth et L’Épopée de
Gilgameshâ€, VT 28 (1978) 318-323.
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