[Retros] Retro_snippets_001 - Schnoebelen Promotion

[andrew buchanan]

Afer after Qohelet :-)

"What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun."
(Ecclesiastes 1:9-14 NIV) 

"Most critical scholars suggest that Ecclesiastes was written around 250 BCE by a non-Hellenized intellectual in the milieu of the Temple in Jerusalem, though Seow of the Anchor Bible commentary argues that it dates to the Persian period. The latest possible date for it is set by the fact that Ben Sirach (written ca. 180 BCE) repeatedly quotes or paraphrases it, as from a canonic rather than a contemporary writing."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecclesiastes)

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But as already Johann Wolfgang von Goethe knew:
(Faust. Part II)
MEPHISTOPHELES.
Original, fahr hin in deiner Pracht! -
Wie würde dich die Einsicht kränken:
Wer kann was Dummes, wer was Kluges denken,
Das nicht die Vorwelt schon gedacht! -

Go forth in splendour, you primal man! -
How could insight harm you, ever:
Who can think of stupid things or clever,
That past ages didn't, long ago, understand.

(and of course Goethe too was anticipated, e.g. by
Publius Terentius Afer, ~185-159 B.C.: "Nullumst iam
dictum quod non sit dictum prius." [Nothing is ever
said that has not been said before.]).