The first verse is, "The words of Koheleth (the Preacher), the son of David, King in Jerusalem." The only son of David who was ever king in Jerusalem was Solomon; was Solomon the author of this book? This is the apparent claim; the question is whether we have not here, as in the case of Daniel, a book put forth pseudonymously; whether the author does not personate Solomon, and speak his message through Solomon's lips. That this is the fact modern scholars almost unanimously maintain. Their reasons for their opinion may be briefly stated: 1. In the conclusion of the book the author speaks in his own person, laying aside the thin disguise which he has been wearing. In several other passages the literary veil becomes transparent. Thus (i. 12), "I Koheleth was king over Israel in Jerusalem." This sounds like the voice of one looking backward and trying to put himself in Solomon's place. Again, in this and the following chapter, he says of himself: "I have gotten me great wisdom above all that were before me in Jerusalem;" "I was great, and increased more than all that were before me in Jerusalem," etc.,--"all of which," says Bleek, "does not appear very natural as coming from the son of David, who first captured Jerusalem." Nobody had been before him in Jerusalem except his father David. 2. The state of society as described in the book, and particularly the reference to rulers, agree better with the theory that it was written during the Persian period, after the Captivity, when the satraps of the Persian king were ruling with vacillating arbitrariness and fitful violence. 3. The religious condition of the people as here depicted, and the religious ideas of the book represent the period following the Captivity, and do not represent the golden age of Israel. 4. More important and indeed perfectly decisive is the fact that the book is full of Chaldaisms, and that the Hebrew is the later Hebrew, of the days of Ezra, Nehemiah, Daniel, and Esther. It could not have been written by Solomon, any more than the "Idylls of the King" could have been written by Edmund Spenser. There are those, of course, who maintain that the book was written by Solomon; just as there are those who still maintain that the sun revolves around the earth. The reason for this opinion is found in the first sentence of the book itself. The book announces its own author, it is said; and to question the truth of this claim is to deny the veracity of Scripture. On this question we may call, from the array of conservative writers who have given us Smith's "Bible Dictionary," such a witness as Professor Plumptre:--