thoughts about human life ‘under the sun’ and giving his considered advice about the way in which it can best be lived. Yet from the very first his readers have been unable to agree about his basic attitude to life. St Jerome, on the one hand, spoke for many Jewish and Christian interpreters in seeing his book as a call to embrace the ascetic life in order to escape the vanities of this world. On the other hand, Jerome also tells us, ‘the Hebrews say that … this book ought to be obliterated, because