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1.6 -- NO NEW EXPERIENCE UNDER THE SUN
  

CHAPTER 1.9-11

9. That which has been is what will be, That which is done is what will be done, And there is nothing new under the sun.

10. Is there anything of which it may be said, "See, this is new"? It has already been in ancient times before us. 11. There is no remembrance of former things, Nor will there be any remembrance of things that are to come by those who will come after. 		 

Our fantastic but defective world is the same one that the generations before us experienced – and the one that our children will experience. Nothing changes.

When Solomon says that there is nothing new under the sun, he is not speaking of technology and new inventions, but of the basic pattern of human existence -- the apparently futile experiences of having, being and doing that carry on just as they have done since Creation. We may be well-informed, modern and sophisticated, but just like the billions who walked this Earth before us, we also eat and drink, work and play and reproduce.

Like them, we buy and sell, invent and discover, own and admire, love and hate, laugh and cry, marry and give in marriage -- experiencing the same hopes and fears and pleasures and pains as did our ancestors . . . and like them, we shall all die, soon to be followed by those who know us and attend our funeral. Together we shall quite soon be forgotten, except perhaps for a fading photograph, a name engraved on a tombstone or, for the favoured few, by some words in a book or a fleeting images on a screen -- and the generations that follow will care less about who and what we really were.

Modern technology not withstanding, we cannot reinvent humanity, and so our mortal bodies remain susceptible to pain, disease and death -- and this apparently futile pattern of life continues from generation to generation, and nobody can change it! There is nothing new under the sun.

Here then, is the thinking that led the Koheleth to assert that: The whole is vanity – utterly futile, empty, and meaningless -- the Vanity of all Vanities!

As already mentioned, the original Hebrew text consisted only of consonants, and those were written as continuous strings without the insertion of vowels or even breaks between words. Neither was the text broken up into the verses and chapters that appear in modern translations. In fact, the whole of the book of Ecclesiastes contained only four breaks in the text to indicate a change of topic or direction – and the first of them is found at this point.