Note 305 — Chapter II · ‘TRUTH AND FICTION’ IN AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

This is the rendering of the four principal versions and of all the best critics, including Mercier, Ewald, Ginsburg, Grätz and Delitzsch; it agrees with the general tendency of Koheleth, and in particular with vii. 5, where the grave is called man’s ‘eternal home’ (see below). It is no doubt opposed by the vowel-points, which are followed in King James’s Bible. But it is more than probable (considering other parallel phenomena) that the authors of the points were directed by a theological and therefore uncritical motive, that, namely, of effacing as far as possible a trace of Koheleth’s opposition to the doctrine, by that time recognised as orthodox, of the immortality of the soul.