Nothing New Under the Sun: A Blunt Paraphrase of Ecclesiastes

by Adam S. Miller

"You won’t like this book. Ecclesiastes is gloomy, skeptical, and irreverent. It is caustic and drolly splenetic. It is unapologetically human. It refuses to abet our hunger for clean narratives and happy endings. It is a hopeless book. Insisting on life’s futility, the world’s capriciousness, and God’s inscrutability, it deliberately cultivates despair. It sees such bone-deep hopelessness as the only cure for what ails us. Ecclesiastes is a hard book full of hard sayings. It is an anvil against which our hearts must be hammered. No wonder we avoid it. But the cost of avoidance is high. As Paul insists, in order to become Christian, we must first learn to be hopeless. Hopelessness is the door to Zion. Hopelessness is crucial to a consecrated life. Before we can find hope in Christ, we must give up hope in everything else." In "Nothing New Under the Sun," Adam S. Miller provides a sharp, contemporary paraphrase of Ecclesiastes, continuing to work in the same vein as the popular "Grace is Not God's Backup An Urgent Paraphrase of Paul's Letter to the Romans" (2015).

Genres: Religion, Nonfiction, Theology, Philosophy, Lds, Faith, Mormonism

66 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 23, 2016

Reviews

[Darwin8u · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Surrender. Let go.
Everything is on fire."
- Adam S. Miller, Nothing New Under the Sun



Part of my Sunday, pew-reading diversion. I've used this space to read big books (Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy) and regular books (Peck's Science the Key to Theology: Volume One: Preliminaries). Miller's little books are just about the right size to be read (if not fully digested) in an hour or two, quietly sitting on a pew.

This book, essentially, is a paraphrase/modernization/interpretation of Ecclesiastes. I'm a big fan of the Wisdom books (Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon). They are books that deal with very modern issues. They exist in the grey. They avoid easy classification and aren't built billboards or bumper sticker evangelism. Plus, they are very poetic. I love them. It doesn't mean they are easy. They aren't they wrestle with big issues and their answers aren't always the ones we hope for, or the ones we expect. But there is something both beautiful and affirming about reading something that says: THIS IS LIFE. There is something that feels right about reading scripture that doesn't deal with platitudes or provide easy answers.

Miller has modernized two different books, one from the Old Testament (Ecclesiastes) and one from the New Testament (Epistle to the Romans) to teach something old in a new way and to connect the idea that there "is no love without out attendant surrender". To further quote Miller on why these two books should be viewed as companions: "These books are two sides of the same coin: grace on one face, hopelessness on the other."

I look forward to spending a Sunday soon with Miller's companion book discussing Romans (Grace Is Not God's Backup Plan: An Urgent Paraphrase of Paul's Letter to the Romans).

[Becky · Rating 5 out of 5]

I felt compelled to read this aloud, the text reminding me of certain of my friends who, our dinners finished and the waiter hovering in hopes of clearing the table, might hold forth for ages on all the ways the world is failing and will fail. I had to hear it in their sardonic tones. And for all my personal and inconsistent idealism, I found this strangely beautiful. The message to work hard while remembering that you can't control the outcome holds the beauty of real truth, all the more so when held up against the concept I keep bumping up against amongst even educated people that whatever you ask the universe for it is bound to give.

A couple of gems I loved:

Chapter 5: Fools don't realize how much truth their noise conceals

And this, which feels desperately applicable today.

Chapter 8: just as violence can't save you from the horror of war, wickedness can't save the wicked. I've seen this, clear as day: power corrupts and then it really tries to fix its own corruption with more injustice.

My favorite comes from the introduction:

To be capable of love and not just obedience, we must be capable of responding with grace to whatever is given. To be capable of love, we must love things for what they are, not for what we had hoped they would be. As a result, only disappointment opens onto love and only disappointment is capable of grace. There is no love without our attendant surrender.

[Blythe Beecroft · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was incredible. Felt like a slap in the face. It prompts deep reflection and is like wading through an existential crisis, but in a good way that jolts you to life. Overall, it was a quick and relentless read. I look forward to reading it again and will think about it often.

"Appreciate what comes and enjoy your work as you can. Working hard, you may actually forget some of your troubles. You might even forget—for days at a time—that everything’s on fire.”

"Things are what they are. You can’t control them. If things are going well, be joyful. If things are going badly, remember that God gave both the good and the bad. He gave both what you’ve loved and what you’ve suffered. And what he’s going to give next is anyone’s guess. You’ll never be able to tell."

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a lovely rendition of Ecclesiastes for the modern reader, though I do wonder if 'lovely' should be associated with such bleakness. Ecclesiastes is the scripture, perhaps the only scripture in the Christian Canon, that illustrates feelings of despair and futility that life breathes. Some call it cynical, others consider it reality.

Here is a description of Ecclesiastes as "Existential Realism" that I find quite fitting:

'Existential' is used to describe man’s interaction with a world which feels foreign, cruel, and lonely. For the most part, it does not focus on anything outside of our immediate world and the emotions and passions we experience within it. My use of the word “realism” is meant to further emphasize this point. The dictionary definition of realism gives a nice summary: “the attitude or practice of accepting a situation as it is and being prepared to deal with it accordingly.”

In my opinion, this is exactly what Ecclesiastes aims to do. It is an observation of life after man was exiled from paradise — i.e. expelled from the Garden of Eden. Since the 'fall of man,' humanity has experienced a sense of alienation. Ecclesiastes captures this feeling beautifully.

Miller's paraphrase of the ancient text makes the old words new and forcefully present to modern readers. It causes one to confront the realities of life. It forces one to drop the notion that if you 'do good' you will 'get good'. That is painful for sure, we'd much rather find a salve to sooth the pain of life and tell us that all will be well in the end but Ecclesiastes offers no such relief. At times we benefit by taking a break from proverbial opiates we regularly imbibe about life being beautiful and it all being worth it in the end so that we can REALLY feel that we are alive and REALLY appreciate the times when life is truly beautiful.

Taking off the rose colored glasses can make us better, if we don't stare too long into the abyss. As Miller would say accepting life as it is before us helps us "To be capable of love and not just obedience, we must be capable of responding with grace to whatever is given." when we live a "proverbs based life" we come to expect good things to come our way, or if bad things come we expect only what we rightfully deserve and no more. An Ecclesiastical view places horror as the expectation and everything else that is not awful, a grace. In a strange turn tasting despair can lead us to be more hopeful and optimistic, or at least more appreciative of what we do have.

[Blair Hodges · Rating 5 out of 5]

Takes under an hour to read but a lifetime to reconcile with. This book will kind of freak you out and make you feel bad about the futility of your life. Five stars!

(Because the hopelessness it calls you to accept can open a pathway to recognize grace. Or so I'm told. I think it's also just cathartic to read such a Debbie Downer voice in scripture.)

[Jeanne McDonald · Rating 5 out of 5]

For a section of the Bible that can be a bit of a downer, Miller has placed a modern spin to highlight the importance Ecclesiastes brings to humanity. While it might leave the reader in a state of hopelessness, through this unique paraphrasing, it also brings hope. Miller has a wonderful way of making something seemingly accessible to the reader without dumbing it down. It's worth the hour to read and the hours upon hours of deep thought it brings about later.

[Kristen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Miller translates Ecclesiastes into a modern, direct speech. I loved it so much. Ecclesiastes is essentially a treatise on hopelessness. Honestly couldn't have read it at a better time of my life. In fact a close friend handed it over to me a few years ago and I'd tried to give it back after never picking it up. For some reason I finally did, and I read it front to back, three times, over the course of two days.

[Jordan Petersen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A kick in the pants that you just keep feeling. This is one of those rare, bracing books that can make deep adjustments to the way you live life by undermining and reconfiguring the way you think about life. I should be saying these things about Ecclesiastes, but to be frank, I needed the "paraphrase." Adam Miller is a quiet and uncompromising genius.

[Jackie · Rating 5 out of 5]

And now I have seen the inside of my mind.

[Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable format

The author's introduction is probably what made this interpretation so great. I need to finish his book on Romans now.

[Russell Fox · Rating 3 out of 5]

Miller's "paraphrase" (not a translation, though there are some ways in which he made use of the original Hebrew in order to work out the best expressions for what he took the message of the text to be) was a quick read, in part because his approach to the text conveyed the same overall message over and over again. It's a message I'm strangely sympathetic to, if not in full agreement with. As I described it when I read Alter's translation of Ecclesiastes, it's a "kind of pious fatalism," an acceptance that a omniscient God oversees all creation, but there is no reason to believe that the existence of such a God implies any particular concern for us, or any particular promise of judgment or justice. For Miller, this kind of "hopelessness" lends itself immediately to his grace-centered take on the teachings of Paul. I'm not certain I agree that such a connection is as obvious as Miller makes it out to be, but it's one to keep in mind all the same.

[Trevor Price · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ecclesiastes is my favorite Old Testament book. Everything is vanity. There's nothing new under the sun. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. Life can be bleak, horribly unfair, and short.

Written for an era of tumult in which the spoils of society were not being equally divided, The Preacher has a message for us today.

I'm not really a pessimist, nor a nihilist, but it's refreshing to see that perspective presented in scripture. Adam Miller's paraphrase helps draw the out the contradictions and tensions in Ecclesiastes and reforms the often vague phrasing into useful counsel.

[Tod · Rating 5 out of 5]

Adam Miller has taken a book I've long neglected and made it relevant to my daily life in the twenty-first century. The admixture of despair, or seemingly surrender, and common sense mantra make the book one I will reread for many years to come, especially when I am tempted to be complacent.

[Sheldon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great stuff. It is an easy and fascinating read. When compared to real translations you can see how Miller got to his version. I found it useful to read a chapter of Miller and then read the same chapter in the NRSV

[Jacob · Rating 5 out of 5]

I never imagined that a book as hopeless as Ecclesiastes could provide me with such a deep hope. But this hope was only possible by breaking down my false hopes and allowing something truly beautiful to emerge. Once again, well done, Adam.

[Chad · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember reading Ecclesiastes in high school, and being utterly baffled: how is this scripture? It seems the opposite of what the gospel message was! "Vanity, vanity, all is vanity!" Everything is useless? Nothing I do matters? I can't have hope? It even seems to deny an afterlife completely! I just couldn't work out what the meaning was supposed to be.

And yes, if you approach Ecclesiastes with the read scriptures + pray -> inspirational quotes + cute memes approach, you aren't going to find it here. It took me a while to figure out Ecclesiastes. Some books along the way helped, including some thoughts on Wisdom literature from "Re-Reading Job" by Michael Austin. This little book isn't a translation of Ecclesiastes persay, but rather a paraphrase, as the title puts it. What a clever and helpful book! It's a very quick read-- a nice introduction on the author's perspective on the book, and then it's just as long as the book of Ecclesiastes is.

I will let some of the quotes speak for themselves:

As Paul insists, in order to become Christian, we must first learn to be hopeless. Hopelessness is the door to Zion. Hopelessness is crucial to a consecrated life. Before we can find hope in Christ, we must give up hope in everything else.

Life in Christ doesn’t overcome this hopelessness. It doesn’t replace it with hope, trading one for the other. Rather, life in Christ baptizes hopelessness and then draws strength from it. It practices a rare kind of messianic hope that is rooted in futility and grows only in that bleak soil.

As sinners, we resist life in Christ by resisting the hopelessness that conditions it. We resist Christ by refusing to give up. We are too proud. But to find Christ, life must be surrendered. All of our projects and plans and vanities must be surrendered. And not just once, but continually. Surrender isn’t just the gate to a Christian life, it is the mode of that life. Living life in Christ means performing life as a continual act of surrender—each plan, each loss, each trophy; each breath, each sight, each thought; each mother, each husband, each child. It means performing hope in Christ by way of an ongoing confession of hopelessness.

Things that can’t be neatly predicted, controlled, or explained can show up with a gift-like quality. Underdetermined by law, they are free. In this sense, hopelessness is an acid bath for developing images of grace. True, often what is given won’t be what you wanted or expected. Rather than being what you’d hoped for, things will just be, instead, whatever they actually are. Sunlight will just be sunlight. Laundry will just be laundry. Your child will just be, perfectly, the faltering child that they are. But this is the nature of grace. And this is why grace is more difficult than the law. To be capable of love and not just obedience, we must be capable of responding with grace to whatever is given. To be capable of love, we must love things for what they are, not for what we had hoped they would be. As a result, only disappointment opens onto love and only disappointment is capable of grace. There is no love without our attendant surrender. This is Zion’s severe superscription: abandon all hope, ye who enter here!

[Segullah · Rating 5 out of 5]

PECULIAR TREASURES WORDS FALL IN

BLOGBOOK REVIEWSDAILY SPECIAL
FRESH TAKES ON “NOTHING NEW”
JUNE 9, 2016



geometric-sun-starA review by Linda Hoffman Kimball of Nothing New Under the Sun: a blunt paraphrase of ecclesiastes by Adam S. Miller, 2016

A decade ago I taught seminary. Preparing to teach Ecclesiastes, I read it thoroughly for the first time. (I probably read it parts in my Protestant upbringing but didn’t know much about it.) My first task was to try to find a deeper meaning to “vanity” than the “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall” variety that the King James’ version called to mind. I learned that the original noun in Hebrew was a word (“hevel”) that had among its other meanings: breath, vapor, smoke, wind, transitory. Adding those nuances to the text, I dove in.

Besides encountering the original text of the Pete Seeger’s and later the Byrds’ 1965 folk rock hit, “Turn, Turn, Turn,” I found rhetorical sledge hammer after sledge hammer. The Solomonic author of this Old Testament book of Wisdom literature bashed to smithereens one effigy of mortal success after another. Nothing survived. Good choices, bad choices – same result. And in the end, we all die. No mincing words. No free passes for good behavior. In the words of another 1960’s song, “Ain’t got time to wonder why. Whoopee, we’re all gonna die!”

I loved it. This felt like the real, gritty life I knew. Not that I hadn’t benefited from a multitude of the good things, good people and The Good News in my life. I had and have. I had also experienced the impacts of death, suicides, disappointments, the insecurities of parenting, addictions, disease and terrors close up – and that’s just in the course of a pretty typical life for a middle-aged American woman. Ecclesiastes was an ancient voice calling out what my contemporary life could feel like, making mortality worthy of the title “a lone and dreary world.”

To read the rest of this review, please visit https://segullah.org/daily-special/fr...

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

When you are grieving, when the problems you face are deep and long-lasting and relentless, it can be hard to find solace in the optimistic cultures of American Christianity. Miller's bleak paraphrase of Ecclesiastes is a balm to the brokenhearted, to the defeated. It grapples with doubt. It grapples with injustice. It refuses to change the subject in the face of innocent suffering. It refuses to reach for the easy answer of just rewards in an afterlife. Miller's Ecclesiastes focuses on what the suffering can do right now to make meaning and joy. The book urges the reader to let go of control, to let go of dreams.

"Instead, during your few days in the sun, work hard, get your hands in the soil, eat when you're hungry, drink when you're thirsty, make love when you're lonely, and sleep like the dead when night falls. That is what's given. Appreciate what comes and enjoy your work as you can. Working hard, you may actually forget some of your troubles. You might even forget - for days at a time - that everything's on fire."

[Larry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating

I’m smitten with the notion of writing a personal translation … for my own use and in an effort to more fully hear and hearken to God’s will and word.

I’m inspired by Adam having written a personal translation and I’m thrilled he’d risk sharing it. It is beautiful to me.

And beyond beautiful, it aids application by its contemporary usage and thereby clear relevance.

I’m a student of religion, scripture, revelation and a seeker of truth and Truth.

Revelation, like all communication, attempts to convey meaning. A spoken language is limiting. This work conveys meaning which is consistent with and revealing of the God I worship. Truth and truth.

Worthy of multiple reads … next pass will be side by side (w the KJV and / or NIV).

Fascinating.

[Art · Rating 4 out of 5]

The writer of Ecclesiastes was an existentialist long before Existentialism was cool! Adam Miller gives us a "blunt paraphrase" of the text. Although I enjoyed the book, I prefer and recommend a good modern translation (i.e. NASV, ESV, NIV). The author of Ecclesiastes saw the reality of the human condition and tried to make sense of it. Despite the ugliest sometimes before us, he recommends we try and enjoy life the best we are able and trust God has some sort of plan that will eventually make sense of why we were created. The author's belief in God is what sets him apart from many 20th Century existentialist writers. Ecclesiastes is a small book but incredibly deep in ruminating on Being and Time.

[Caleb Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Much like his paraphrase of Romans in his book "Grace Is Not God's Backup Plan", Adam Miller gives a similar treatment to an often ignored book in the Bible: Ecclesiastes. Perhaps because it describes existential parts of life we'd rather not think about, Ecclesiastes is underutilized in Christian/LDS discourse. And it is precisely because it covers existentially troubling realities that it is needed more in discourse. Adam Miller gives strength to the voice of this text: modernizing it in an ecumenical way. A faith than can grapple with these troubling realities will find itself more robust and able to thrive in life.

[Bryan Sebesta · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I read old scripture, it feels like just that: old scripture. Ancient, outmoded, and outdated in its syntax and metaphor and analogy, misunderstood except for those with training in Ancient Near Eastern studies or some equivalent degree. How grateful I was to Adam Miller. He took Ecclesiastes and rewrote the message in today's language. It is a paraphrase: structurally true to the original text, but differing when another metaphor is more relevant or a phrase more relevant to the meaning that the Preacher wanted to convey. I love Ecclesiastes now. Cynical at points, it is just as wise, in some respects, as the Book of Proverbs before it!

[Ethan Jarrell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Adam Miller’s Nothing New Under the Sun is a bold and poetic retelling of Ecclesiastes, and while it carries the weight and mood of the original text well, the format left something to be desired. Without a side-by-side comparison to the biblical verses, it’s hard to track how closely the paraphrase aligns with the source. It feels like a project best read with Ecclesiastes open next to it—which limits its accessibility as a stand-alone work. That said, Miller’s voice is compelling, and the themes of futility, beauty, and meaning still shine through.

[Anita · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once again Mr. Miller has taken scripture and used his talents to make it understandable without "dumbing it down." In fact, Miller requires us to think even more deeply. This short book has put the Preacher in context and shown its place in relation to the good news. Thank heavens I can now think of Ecclesiastes as something more than a great song by The Byrds.

[Robert Lloyd · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant take on Ecclesiastes

Having highly enjoyed Adam Miller's paraphrase and commentary on the book of Romans, I was excited to read this book. I wasn't disappointed! The author did an excellent job of detailing the philosophical and spiritual importance of this book to people of faith. I have a deeper understanding and appreciation of Ecclesiastes because of this book.

[Matthew Kern · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is short. The book it's based on is short. This book is readable and blunt to the modern reader, the book it's based on is not so readable, but blunt.

That's the point. Ecclesiastes had new life breathed into it by Miller. A book forgotten it dismissed by judeochristans is approachable once more.

The introduction is beautiful as well.

Keep the paraphrase books coming Miller.

[Ronald Schoedel III · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great modern paraphrase. I love how Miller describes Ecclesiastes’ pessimism as the opposite side of the same coin as Paul’s letter to the Romans which focuses on the optimistic outlook provided through God’s grace.

[Jon Terry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whew. Not a light read. I'll share just one verse that that struck me:

"Grief is better than laughter because sorrow softens a hard heart."
- Ecclesiastes 7:3

[Cami · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Ecclesiastes is gloomy, skeptical, and irreverent...It is unapologetically human...Ecclesiastes is a hard book full of hard sayings."

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice modern "translation"