The truth is that, though the first three chapters are in the main coherent and continuous, little order or arrangement can be detected in the rest of the book. Various explanations have been offered. Bickell, e.g., supposed that the leaves had by some accident become disarranged--a supposition not wholly impossible, but highly improbable, especially when we consider that the Greek translation reads the book in the same order as the Hebrew text. Others suppose with equal improbability that the book is a sort of dialogue, in which each speaker maintains his own thesis, while the epilogue, xii. 13f, pronounces the final word on the discussion. One thing is certain, that various moods are represented in the book: the question is whether they are the moods of one man or of several. Baudissin thinks it not impossible that, "apart from smaller interpolations, the book as a whole is the reflection of the struggle of one and the same author towards a view of the world which he has not yet found." Note the phrase "apart from interpolations." Even the most cautious and conservative scholars usually admit that the facts constrain them to believe in the presence of interpolations: e.g., xi. 9b and xii. la are almost universally regarded in this light. The difficulties occasioned by the book are chiefly three. (1) Its fragmentary character. Ch. x.; e.g., looks more like a collection of proverbs than anything else. (2) Its abrupt transitions: e.g., vii. 19, 20. "Wisdom strengtheneth the wise more than ten men that are in a city: for there is not a righteous man on the earth." This may be another aspect of (1). But (3) more serious and important are the undoubted contradictions of the book, some of which had been noted by early Jewish scholars. E.g., there is nothing better than to eat and drink, ii. 24; it is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting, vii. 2. In iii. 1-8 times are so fixed and determined that human labour is profitless, iii. 9, while in iii. 11 this inflexible order is not an oppressive but a beautiful thing. In viii. 14, ix. 2 (cf. vii. 15) the fate of the righteous and the wicked is the same, in viii. 12, 13, it is different: it is well with the one and ill with the other. In iii. 16, which is radically pessimistic (cf. _vv_. 18-21), there is no justice: in iii. 17 a judgment is coming. Better death than life, iv. 2, better life than death, ix. 4 (cf. xi. 7). In i. 17 the search for wisdom is a pursuit of the wind: in ii. 13 wisdom excels folly as light darkness. Ch. ii. 22 emphasizes the utter fruitlessness of labour, iii. 22 its joy. These contradictions are too explicit to be ignored. Indeed sometimes their juxtaposition forces them upon the most inattentive reader; as when viii. 12, 13 assert that it is well with the righteous and ill with the wicked, whereas viii. 14 asserts that the wicked often fare as the just should fare and vice versa; and that this is the author's real opinion is made certain by the