(at some date unknown) decided that the accuser who failed to obtain one-fifth of the votes should be fined 1000 drachmas (£40). (For the procedure in case of Ostracism see that article.)
Summary.—Thus it will be seen that the Ecclesia, with no formal organization, had absolute power save for the Graphē Paranomōn (which, therefore, constituted the dicasteries in one sense the sovereign power in the state). It dealt with all matters home and foreign. Every member could initiate legislation, and, as has been shown, the power of the council was merely formal. As against this it must be pointed out that it was by no means a representative assembly in practice. The phrase used to describe a very special assembly (κατάκλητος ἐκκλησία) shows that ordinarily the country members did not attend (κατακαλεῖν always involving the idea of motion from a distance towards Athens), and Thucydides says that 5000 was the maximum attendance, though it must be remembered that he is speaking of the time when the number of citizens had been much reduced owing to the plague and the Sicilian expedition. From this we understand the necessity of payment in the 4th century, although in that period the Ecclesia was supreme (Constitution of Athens, xli. 2). The functions of the Ecclesia thus differed in two fundamental respects from those which are in modern times associated with a popular assembly. (1) It did not exercise, at least in the period as to which we are best instructed, the power of law-making (νομοθεσία) in the strict sense. It must be remembered, however, in qualification of this statement that it possessed the power of passing psephismata which would in many cases be regarded as law in the modern sense. (2) The Ecclesia was principally concerned with the supervision of administration. Much of what we regard as executive functions were discharged by the Ecclesia.
With this article compare those on Solon; Boulē; Areopagus; Greek Law, and, for other ancient popular assemblies, Apella; Comitia. See also A. H. J. Greenidge, Handbook of Greek Constitutional History (1896); Gilbert, Greek Constitutional Antiquities (trans. Brooks and Nicklin, 1895); Schömann, De comitiis Atheniensium; L. Schmidt, “De Atheniensis reipublicae indole democratica” in Ind. Lect. (Marburg, 1865); J. W. Headlam, Election by Lot at Athens (Cambridge, 1891). See also the histories of Greece by Meyer, Busolt, Grote, Evelyn Abbott, and J. E. Sandys’ edition of the Constitution of Athens (1892); for a comparative study, E. A. Freeman, Comparative Politics. (J. M. M.)
ECCLESIASTES (Heb. קהלת, Kohelet, “Koheleth”; Sept. ἐκκλησιαστής; Jerome concionator), one of the Wisdom Books of the Old Testament (see Wisdom Literature). The book, as it stands, is a collection of the discourses, observations and aphorisms of a sage called Koheleth, a term the precise meaning of which is not certain. The Greek ecclesiastes means one who takes part in the deliberations of an assembly (ecclesia), a debater or speaker in an assembly (Plato, Gorgias, 452 E), and this is the general sense of the Hebrew word. Its form (singular feminine) has been supposed to be the adoption or imitation of the Arabic employment of a fem. sing. as the designation of a high official person, as is the case in the title caliph (whence the rendering in the margin of the Revised Version, “Great orator”); but the adoption of an Arabic idiom is not probable. This usage is not Hebrew; it is not found either in the Old Testament or in the later (Mishnaic) Hebrew. The form may have been suggested by that of the Hebrew word for “wisdom.” Koheleth, however, is employed in the book not as a title of wisdom (for “wisdom” is never the speaker), but as the independent name of the sage. It is intended to represent him as a member of an assembly (Kahal)—not the Jewish congregation, but a body of students or inquirers, such as is referred to in xii. 9-11, a sort of collegium, of which he was the head; and as instructor of this body he gives his criticism of life. The author begins, indeed, with identifying his sage with King Solomon (i. 12-ii. 11, 12b); but he soon abandons this literary device, and speaks in his own name. The rendering “preacher” has a misleading connotation.
In the book as we have it there is no orderly exposition of a theory; it rather has the appearance of a collection of remarks jotted down by a pupil (somewhat after the manner of Xenophon’s Memorabilia), or of extracts from a sage’s notebook. It is, however, characterized throughout (except in some scribal additions) by a definite thought, and pervaded by a definite tone of feeling. The keynote is given in the classic phrase with which the discussion opens and with which it closes: “Vanity of vanities (i.e. absolute vanity), all[1] is vanity!” Life, says the author, has nothing of permanent value to offer. His attitude is one not of bitterness but of calm hopelessness, with an occasional tinge of disgust or contempt. He fancies that he has tried or observed everything in human experience, and his deliberate conclusion is that nothing is worth doing. He believes in an all-powerful but indifferent God, and is himself an observer of society, standing aloof from its passions and ambitions, and interested only in pointing out their emptiness.
This general view is set forth in a number of particular observations.
1. His fundamental proposition is that there is a fixed, unchangeable order in the world, a reign of inflexible law (i. 4-11, iii. 1-11, 14, 15, vii. 13, viii. 5-9): natural phenomena, such as sunrise and sunset, recur regularly; for everything in human experience a time has been set; birth and death, building up and destroying, laughing and weeping, silence and speech, love and hate, war and peace, are to be regarded not as utterances of a living, self-directing world, but as incidents in the work of a vast machine that rolls on for ever; there is an endless repetition—nothing is new, nothing is lost; if one thinks he has found something new, inquiry shows that it was in existence long ago; God, the author of all, seeks out the past in order to make it once more present; it is impossible to add to or take from the content of the world, impossible to change the nature of things, to effect any radical betterment of life; the result is unspeakable weariness—a depressing series of sights and sounds. No goal or purpose is discoverable in this eternal round; if the sun rises and goes on his journey through the sky, it is merely to come back to the place where he rose; rivers flow for ever into the sea without filling it. To what end was the world created? It is impossible to say. Such is Koheleth’s view of life, and it is obvious that such a conception of an aimless cosmos is thoroughly non-Jewish, if we may judge Jewish thought by the great body of the extant literature.
2. Further, says Koheleth, man is impelled to study the world, but under the condition that he shall never comprehend it (iii. 11, vii. 23, 24, viii. 16, 17). As to the meaning of the Hebrew term olam in iii. 11, there are various opinions, but “world” appears to be the rendering favoured by the connexion: “God has made everything beautiful in its time, and has put the olam into men’s minds, yet so that they cannot understand His work”: the olam, the sum of phenomena, is God’s work. The word is not found in this sense elsewhere in the Old Testament, but it so occurs in the Mishna (Pirke Aboth, iv. 7), and the vocabulary of Ecclesiastes is admittedly similar to that of the Mishna. Only here in the Old Testament does it stand as a simple isolated noun; elsewhere it is the definition of a noun (in “everlasting covenant,” &c.), or it is preceded by a preposition, in the phrases “for ever,” “of old,” or it stands alone (sing. or plur.) in the same adverbial sense, “for ever.” The word means first a remote point in past or future, then a future point without limit of time, then a period of history, and finally the world considered as a mass of human experiences (cf. αἰών). The renderings “eternity” and “future” in the present passage are unsatisfactory; the former has an inappropriate metaphysical connotation, and yields no distinct sense; the latter does not suit the connexion, though there is reference to the future elsewhere (ix. 1). God, the text here declares, has made the world an object of man’s thought, yet so that man can never find out the work that God has done (iii. 11). The reference seems to be not so much to the variety and complexity of phenomena as to the impossibility of construing them rationally or in such a way that man may foresee and provide for his future. Man is in the clutches of fate (ix. 11, 12): there is no observable relation between exertion and result in life: the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong;
- ↑ The Hebrew has the definite article, “the whole,” τὸ πᾶν.
