Intro

My doctoral dissertation took approximately three years to complete, from the proposal stage in 2013 to its submission in 2016. It then took another two years to transform the dissertation into a sellable book. The process of completing my book, Reanimating Qohelet’s Contradictory Voices: Studies of Open-Ended Discourse on Wisdom in Ecclesiastes, took about five years in total. During that time, I wrote, deleted, revised, and edited countless times. Although the process was tedious, it allowed me to clarify my thoughts and express them more effectively. I cut repetitive sentences and paragraphs to make them more concise and added more words to some parts that lacked clear explanations. This long editorial process made my first book more logical and clear.

The Bible is also a book that has gone through a complex editorial process to reach its final form. However, unlike a dissertation or a book written by a single author, the Bible has been edited by multiple editors and authors. Some editors have deleted or added content, resulting in changes to the flow of ideas and sometimes contradictory elements within the same book.