Author(s): Lloyd Geering

NZ biography

Though 23 centuries have passed since a Jewish sage calling himself the Proclaimer (Ecclesiastes) set down his thoughts about life, they are strangely in tune with today's secular age. Lloyd Geering has ingeniously brought Ecclesiastes to life in a series of dialogues with him, which show that, in today's terminology, Ecclesiastes was a free-thinker, a humanist and an existentialist. In fact, this biblical heretic is at odds with the rest of the Bible - he finds no discernible thread of purpose in life or the universe, and proposes that though Nature operates in cycles, much of human life is determined by sheer chance. The role of the sage, as Ecclesiastes saw it, was not to pass on gems of eternal wisdom, but to goad us to think things out for ourselves in our search for meaning. First published 2010.