Moving from the text to the sermon: preaching from Ecclesiastes

Some years later than I intended, I have added my Master dissertation (MTh) on Ecclesiastes to the "Writings" page of my website. I hope it will be useful to someone.

Masters dissertations aren't meant to be casual reading. But if you're interested, the title is "From text to sermon: A comparative study of two evangelical approaches to the interpretation and contemporary application of the book of Ecclesiastes". Below follows the abstract.  In brief, it is about how we read Ecclesiastes, and then how we apply and preach it in the church today, with understanding and confidence (and without contradicting ourselves by just mixing together second-hand ideas that don't actually blend!). It discusses this by using two contrasting commentaries to show and evaluate the different options.

Abstract

This study examines the routes from the text of the book of Ecclesiastes to applications to a contemporary Christian audience, for an evangelical preacher or teacher. This examination is carried out via interaction with two specific commentators. These are Tremper Longman III and Iain Provan. 

The major interpretative issues which will influence the application process are identified and analysed. As well as issues in reading Ecclesiastes commonly discussed by critical scholarship such as its structure, the identity, outlooks and relationships of the speaker or speakers within the books, the meaning of hebel, the relationship between “optimistic” and “pessimistic” passages, the question of multiple levels of context is identified as a crucial one. In this regard, the narrative context of the account of creation and fall is identified as especially important. The question of the author's attitude to Israel's narrative has some significance for interpretation despite Ecclesiastes' lack of explicit focus upon it. Ecclesiastes' canonical context is found to generate applications which are not part of the outlook of the original author's discussion. 

It is found that the effect of the canonical context is that a wide variety of interpretations of Qohelet's thought will result in similar applications of the book as a whole, though the balance of emphasis between different kinds of applications may differ. This conclusion is well illustrated by Longman and Provan. Furthermore, it is argued that the original author's discussion is deliberately narrowly focussed, and as a consequence that such applications are legitimate. 

Overall, it is believed that the analysis and distinctions in this study will help the development both of a deeper understanding and of a greater confidence in applying this ancient book to contemporary hearers.