Page:Job and Solomon (1887).djvu/250

 in Dante's Convito, which we have the poet's own authority for regarding as allegorical? And if we compare the rival theories with that which they attempt to displace, can it be said that Taylor's dirge-theory, or Umbreit's storm-theory, or that adopted by Wright from Wetzstein is more suitable to the poem than the allegorical theory? Certainly the latter is a very old, if not the oldest theory, and on a point of this sort the ancients have some claim to be deferred to. They seem to have felt instinctively that the intellectual atmosphere of Koheleth (as well as of the Chronicler) was that of the later Judaism. The following story is related in a Talmudic treatise. 'The Emperor asked R. Joshua ben Hananyah, "How is it that you do not go to the house of Abidan (a place of learned discussions)?" He said to him, "The mountain is snow (my head is white); the hoar frosts surround me (my whiskers and my beard are also hoary); its dogs do not bark (I have lost my wonted power of voice); its millers do not grind (I have no teeth); the scholars ask me whether I am looking for something I have not lost (referring probably to the old man feeling here and there)."'

Once more (see i. 2) the mournful motto, 'Vanity of vanities! saith the Koheleth; all is vanity' (xii. 8), and the book in its original form closes. Did the author himself attach this motto? Surely not, if the preceding words on the return of the spirit to its God (see above, on iii. 21) are genuine, for, 152b] (Wright, Ecclesiastes, p. 262). The anecdote is given in connection with an allegoric interpretation of our poem.]