Zwart als git = Black As Jet, 1972 - 1988

The Greek name for the book Ecclesiastes, based on the Hebrew Qahal, is known as Qoheleth, the Book of the Preacher, the leader within the assembly. Oosterhuis often drew on its whimsy, about the vicissitudes on the unrelenting flow of life, for example A Little Song of Life [JM 46]. In a wisdom tradition of literature, from its style of reflective writing aphorisms would flow. Ecclesiatses is Hellenistic - Greek - in style, foreign to the Hebrew existentialist mind. Qoheleth dates to the 3rd century BC, when Israel was under the sway of Alexandria. This appears to have been a time of transition between centuries of foreign oppression, with the emergence of a new nationalism heralded by hope and revolutionary optimism of the Maccabees.