Jerome, on Eccl 1:9

“What is it that hath been? the same thing that shall be. What is it that hath been done? the same that shall be done.”

“"The thing that has been, it is that which will be. And that which is done is that which shall be done. And there is no new thing under the sun." It seems to me that he now speaks generally about those things that he enumerated above: about generation after generation, the globe of the earth, the rising and setting of the sun, the course of rivers, the vastness of the ocean and all things which we learn either through thought or through sight or hearing, because there is nothing in nature that has not been before. For from the beginning of the world men have been born and have died, and the earth stood level above the waters and the sun lay in its origin. And lest I should go on to list more things, it is left to God as creator to fly with the birds, to swim with the fish, and walk with the creatures of the earth and slide with snakes. And the comic [Terence Eunuchus, prol. 41.] said something similar to this: "Nothing has been said, which has not been said before", about which my teacher Donatus, when he was lecturing about this verse, said: "Let them die, who have said our words before us." [Donatus Comm. in Terent. Eun.] Then if is possible to say nothing new in discourse, how great the creation of the world must have been, which has been complete right from the start, that God was able to rest from his work on the seventh day! Read also in another book: "If everything that is done under the sun has already been done is past centuries, and man was already made when the sun was made: then man existed before he came under the sun." [Origines peri Archon III 5, 3.] But he is excluded, because by this reasoning even packhorses, gnats, and each insect and large animal is said to have been made before the sky. Unless however he should reply that talking comes from the consequences of speaking not about other animals but about the man Ecclesiastes, for he says "there is nothing new under the sun about which one can say 'look this is new!' But he does not speak of animals but of man alone, because if he means animals to be new, then he refutes his own opinion that nothing is new under the sun.”

Imported from an open dataset — not yet checked against the printed edition.