Is Ecclesiastes truly the greatest book ever written by man?

What is the best self contained story in the bible?

Leviticus is way better :D

Bank when I still considered myself a Christian, I tried to read the Bible. I quit at Leviticus. My god, I've never encountered such a boring book

Joseph

It's not really contrarian.

yes
is in, with its own book? Jonah of course

>read 2.5 books out of 80
>Christianity is soooo boring and stupid lol

Not really though. He just goes over every aspect of human life at that time and tells us why it is meaningless after speaking good things about it.
The writing itself is beautiful, I agree, but as a philosophical book it's not really comparable to our era's stuff.

Solomon himself had problems following the commandments of God, he had a lot of concubines, one of whom worshipped false gods in the temple

Maybe the somber tone of the book reflects the emptiness Solomon feels after rejecting God's commandments for so long.

Btw many researches think these last lines your'e talking about are not found originally in Eclesiastes, but added later by ancient bible editors so people won't abandon god's ways after reading the book's morals

I was talking about the book of Leviticus, not the whole Bible. The rest is probably somewhat interesting, but Leviticus destroyed any drive to read it that I had

Perhaps it was his way of saying: "Look, guys, I've literally had it all; cash, pussy, power, you name it. At the end of the day, I still felt empty, though. Don't make the same mistakes as me, man. Don't abandon the Lord's ways. It's all that actually matters."

i can't take guys who later in life decide to tell everyone that pussy isn't important, as men get older they get less horny, i used to be junglistically horny in my 20s, now i'm in my 30s and i can take or leave pussy, and it certainly doesn't give me that "proud of my self" feeling you get when you fucking some hot puss as a young man...so right now it would be easy for me to say "pussy doesn't matter, just deny the pleasures of life to yourself, and embrace asceticism" or something, but it would be a bunch of bullshit, beware old men telling you pussy isn't important after decades of ravaging punany their lust starts to die down and suddenly they discover pussy isn't that important

Do you think this only applies to pussy, or should we beware old men telling us X isn't important in general?

Solomon had over a thousand wives and concubines. It follows that he had more sons than he could be a father to, so he wrote Ecclesiastes for them.
"Ecclesiastes" means "preacher" or "announcer", someone who stands on a stage to proclaim something to a group of people.
It was his way of fathering his countless sons.
Yes, he led a life filled with sin, existential turbulence, and despair, but in his old age Solomon was considered the wisest man alive because of it. Ecclesiastes is a synthesis of that wisdom, a letter to posterity.
I also pretend that I'm one of the sons he wrote it to

well, on the opposite side i might say "beware young people (your peers) telling you money doesn't matter", as i get older i value living comfortably more than i did when i was younger, as you get close to 40 "roughing it" is a less appealing option, you actually want to eat healthy food, and sleep the whole night in a quiet environment, etc. all which take money to obtain in a major city, not to say i can't still deal with rough conditions, but i'd rather focus that willpower into my work rather than sleeping off a hangover on a dilapidated couch and eating ramen noodles and protein powder, etc. but if you can survive your youth without money why care until you get older? well you need to start laying the groundwork for a comfortable lifestyle now otherwise it will be more difficult, so get a degree anything you want, the difference between stem degree and humanities degree is not as big career wise as degree vs no degree, and try to invest some money every year, even if it's only 500-1000 bucks, by the time you get into your 30s and start thinking differently, you'll have a little pile of capital to use for buying property, starting a business, doing a grad degree, etc.

vanity of vanities all is vanity

Not even the best book of the Tanakh, Job is the only necessary one.

i'm not saying do a law degree and become a yuppie, but just keep one eye on your future while you enjoy your youth

Gotcha. Thanks for the responses, old man

Ecclesiastes is top three in the old testament. Psalms of course is best then Ecclesiastes followed closely by Job. David's story is the most profound excluding Jesus himself. He was a man after God's own heart in every meaning of the phrase.

If you understood the book then it would be impossible to think it great for to do so would be to go against what it preaches, thereby meaning it wasn't really that great, and if you didn't think it that great it cannot be the greatest.