Comparing Phaedo and Ecclesiastes

Separated by language, history and several hundred miles of the Mediterranean Sea, two of the world's greatest cultures simultaneously matured and advanced in the centuries before the birth of Christianity. In the Aegean north, Hellenic Greeks blossomed around their crown jewel of Athens, while the eastern Holy City of Jerusalem witnessed the continued development of Hebrew tradition. Though they shared adjacent portions of the globe and of chronology, these two civilizations grew up around wholly different ideologies. The monotheistic devotion of Judaism that evolved in the Hebrew lands stood in stark contrast to the Greek worship of polytheistic Olympians, a religion that often tended more towards the rational and philosophic than the longstanding Jewish piety.

In the spirit of such a division appear the two works in consideration, the rather secular Phaedo from the Greek luminary Plato and its counterpart among the sacred pages of the Old Testament, Ecclesiastes. Though the ages of each cannot definitely determined, most scholarly assumptions place their birth within a century and a half of one another. The Greek probably was authored just after Socrates' death in 399BC and the Hebrew text was likely composed sometime around 250 BC, leaving an insignificant difference relative the overall scale of antiquity. This reasonably close proximity of authorship can clearly be seen in the way these two works consider the fundamental and eternal questions of life, yet for every tie between the two a difference also abounds.

Plato, author of the Phaedo, was the second member of the brilliant philosophical flourish of ancient Athens that began with Socrates, continued through him and then culminated with Aristotle. Thou...

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...and bemoans Socrates' foolish waste of his life in preparation for an empty and eternal death. Can we really decide which to side with, the abstention of Socrates or the indulgence of Koheleth? As usually seems to be the case, most would likely avoid such extremes to opt towards moderation, but the question is really invalid since for these works are not presented as a guidebook of "how to live." Such precious pieces of classical literature are examples of the answers two men have found to the eternal questions, questions that every individual must confront and investigate for himself.

Works Cited

Plato, Phaedo, In: The Collected Dialogues Of Plato Including The Letters, Editors: E. Hamilton and H. Cairns, Bollingen Series LXXI, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1961.

The Hebrew Bible. "Ecclesiastes". Ed. Gottwald, Norman K. Fortress Press, 1985