Making Some Sense of the Paradox: Polyphony, Conflicting Ideologies, Dialogism, and the Dialectic Dynamics of Ecclesiastes

Abstract

Rooted in the rubrics of “Text and Reading,”* 1 this article correlates some of the new advances in the study of Ecclesiastes in the recent past. 2 Employing four intentionally hammered out reading strategies—reading polyphonically; reading “cross the grains”; reading dialectically and reading narrativally, it seeks to demonstrate that the integration of four perspectival readings will enrich the meaning-significance of the book. Moreover, it aims at a proposal that would make some sense of this paradoxical book