Thesis: Absurdity in Qohelet

One of the projects I've been working on this year—in between approval, assignment, and my regular classwork—is a master's thesis. The M.Div. program does not require a thesis, but it can be taken on as an elective (in which case it's treated as an independent study).

I have been researching and, more recently, writing on the Old Testament book of Qohelet. You may know it by its Greek title, Ecclesiastes. You may also know it as the book that inspired "Turn, Turn, Turn," since the poem "To everything there is a season" (in chapter 3) is its most famous section.

There is a lot more to Qohelet than "Turn, Turn, Turn." The book presents a surprisingly contemporary approach to issues including meaning and worth in life, divine justice, and death. My thesis is nearly complete now, so I decided to make a visual representation using Wordle. Wordle creates a word cloud based on the thesis text; in the cloud, larger words are those that appear more often.

Take a look: