Ecclesiastes Through the Centuries

Over the centuries, Ecclesiastes has influenced numerous aspects of life and thought. Ecclesiastes Through the Centuries assesses the diverse effects of the book on the culture of the various times in religion, art, and social thought. Ecclesiastes shaped the life of European abbeys of the middle ages; for Renaissance thinkers it provided a sceptical line of inquiry weighted with the disquieting authority of Scripture. The imagination of artists, musicians, and poets from the Renaissance to the present day were, and continue to be, inspired by it. The influence of Ecclesiastes on literature has engaged the minds of authors as diverse as Bacon, Donne, Eliot, Hardy, and Melville, as well as numerous Elizabethan poets. This commentary traces all of these influences as well as the fascinating range of Jewish and Christian readings about the impact of Ecclesiastes. The result is an informative and broad-ranging approach to the impact of this book through the centuries that will engage all those studying Ecclesiastes. For further information about the Blackwell Bible Commentaries please visit http://bbibcomm.net.

Eric S. Christianson is Senior Lecturer in Biblical Studies at the University of Chester. He is author of A Time to Tell: Narrative Strategies in Ecclesiastes (1988) and co-editor of Cinéma Divinité: Religion, Theology and the Bible in Film (2005). He is co-founder of the Centre for the Study of Religion and Popular Culture at the University of Chester and maintains the website for the Blackwell Bible Commentary Series (http://bbibcomm.net).