In the book of Ecclesiastes it is held by many scholars that traces of Greek philosophy are to be discerned. Tyler, for example, shows that the passage, iii. 1-8, which gives a catalogue of times and seasons, is an echo of the teaching of the Stoics that men should live according to nature.[105] Again, the thought contained in iii. 18, 19 (“... that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; and man hath no pre-eminence above the beasts; for all is vanity ...”) is certainly in accordance with the Epicurean teaching regarding the mortality of the soul.[106] Barton argues strongly against these views[107]; but cogent as many of his arguments are, they are not convincing in every case; this applies especially to what he says in reference to the passage, iii. 18, 19: “Koheleth’s denial of immortality differs from the Epicurean denial. His is but a passing doubt; it is not dogmatically expressed, and at the end (xii. 7) his doubt has vanished, and he reasserts the older Jewish view (Gen. ii. 7). This older view was not an assertion of immortality, but the primitive conception that the breath comes from God and goes back to Him. The Epicureans, on the other hand, dogmatically argued for the non-immortality of the soul, and possessed well-assured theories about it.”[108] This argument is not very convincing; at any rate, it does not disprove our present point, which is that the _traces of Greek influence_ are to be discerned in this book. Cornill’s sober _dictum_ on the subject generally is, we feel convinced, the right one, when he says: “The question whether _Koheleth_ shows immediate knowledge of and dependence upon Greek philosophy is an open one; but so much appears certain, that such a work could only have been produced by a Jewish mind imbued, or at least influenced, by Hellenism.”[109] St. Jerome, in commenting on the passage, ix. 7-9 (“Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart ...”), remarks that the writer appears to be reproducing some Epicurean ideas[110]; Cheyne is not surprised at this, for the book is, as he says, “conspicuous by its want of a native Jewish background ... it obviously stands at the close of the great Jewish humanistic movement, and gives an entirely new colour to the traditional humanism by its sceptical tone and its commendations of sensuous pleasure”; and a little further on he says that “it is perfectly possible to hold that there are distinctively Epicurean doctrines in _Koheleth_. The later history of Jewish thought may well seem to render this opinion probable. How dangerously fascinating Epicureanism must have been when the word ‘Epicuros’ became a synonym in Rabbinic Hebrew for infidel or even atheist.”[111] Cheyne does not, however, believe in any traces of Greek influence, whether Epicurean or Stoic, in the book. “I do not see,” he says, “that we