We have seen that the Wisdom of Sirach betrays a taste for Egyptian festivity (p. 191). May we not suppose that Koheleth too had travelled to Alexandria? This view commends itself to Kleinert, and I have no objection to it with due limitations. Koheleth may have envied and sought to copy the light-hearted gaiety of the valley of the Nile. But we ought not to conceal the fact that the lines quoted above are followed by others which have no parallel in Koheleth.
Good for thee then will have been (an honest life),
Therefore be just and hate transgressions,
For he who loveth justice (will be blest).
(They in the shades) are sitting on the bank of the river,
Thy soul is among them, drinking its sacred water.
. . . (woe to the bad one!)
He shall sit miserable in the heat of infernal fires.
There is a wide difference between a people who believed in a happy Amenti where Osiris himself dwelt and the Jew who doubted much but believed firmly in Sheól. I admit then the probability that the latter had travelled, and was not unaffected by the brightness of Egyptian society, but I see no reason to suppose that he knew and was influenced by the expressions of Egyptian songs. The resemblances adduced are to me as fortuitous as those between the love-*poems of the Nile valley and the Hebrew Song of Songs, or (we may add) as that striking one between Eccles. i. 4 and some of the opening lines of the 'Song of the Harper,'—
Men pass away since the time of Ra [the sun of day]
And the youths come in their stead.
Like as Ra reappears every morning,
And Tum [the sun of night] sets in the horizon,
Men are begetting,
And women are conceiving.[1]
I make no excuse for the length of this inquiry. If we could trace Greek influences, linguistic or philosophical, in
- ↑ Records of the Past, vi. 127.
