Ecclesiastes

What is the message of the book of Ecclesiastes? How should we understand it? It’s perhaps one of those books that we don’t spend much time reading or thinking about. However, it’s one of my favourites, so this is my sermon about it!

Vapour of vapours

How do you translate the start of Ecclesiastes? “Meaningless”, “Vanity” are two of the more well-known versions. But there are problems with these!

Ecclesiastes as experiment

What does Ecclesiastes look like from a scientist’s point of view? People have long struggled with how best to understand Ecclesiastes and the approach of R J Berry provides a refreshing change to some of the theologian’s arguments over whether it is ‘pessimistic’ or ‘optimistic’. On another note, Ecclesiastes has also provided the inspiration for…

Galileo

Ecclesiastes and science

Blackwell are publishing a really helpful series of Biblical commentaries with a twist; they show how people have interpreted the books as a whole and individual passages and verses throughout the ages. Hopefully this is one way of at least lessening C S Lewis’ caustic comment in The Screwtape Letters (number 27): “To regard the…