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No, there are no second and third books of Ecclesiastes (note the spelling, please). There is an apocryphal book called Ecclesiasticus (also known as the Wisdom of ben-Sirach), but it is not related. "Ecclesiastes" is simply the Greek translation of "Qoheleth", its Hebrew name, which means "caller of the assembly".

There are several other pseudepigraphical books of the "wisdom" tradition, but none of them is "gnostic". Everything along that line predates Gnosticism by at least a couple of centuries. And Ecclesiastes isn't gnostic either. It's world-weariness is just a way of challenging the "Deuteronomistic" idea that God fully rewards faithfulness and punishes evil in this life, much as Job does.

2007-12-04 17:29:15 · answer #1 · answered by skepsis 7 · 0 0

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