“Nihil sub sole novum”: Qoheleth, Herod’s curiosity, and the only newness

By Prof. Dr. Daniel C. Afonso · Updated 19 October 2026

Nihil sub sole novum. […] Quis est autem iste, de quo audio ego talia? Et quaerebat videre eum.
Eccl 1:9 and Lk 9:9

Thursday of the Twenty-Fifth Week in Ordinary Time sets face to face the most disenchanted book of the Bible and a king who cannot understand what is happening in his own territory. Qoheleth declares that all is vanity and that there is nothing new under the sun. Herod hears about Jesus, is perplexed, and the sentence with which Luke dismisses him is one of the saddest in the Gospel: “and he kept trying to see Jesus” (v. 9). One text says there is no newness. The other shows a man before absolute newness, incapable of recognizing it.

I. The first reading: Eccl 1:2-11

The Hebrew word that the tradition translated as vanity is hebel, which literally means breath, vapor, that which dissipates as soon as it forms. “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity” (v. 2) is not a moral insult to the world; it is an observation about its substance. Nothing that man builds has enough weight to last.

Qoheleth demonstrates this with a series of natural cycles that go nowhere. The sun rises and sets and returns to its starting point. The wind blows from the south and then from the north, “in a constant coming and going” (v. 6). The rivers flow to the sea and the sea is never full. And hence the conclusion: “what has been will be again and what has happened will happen again; nothing new under the sun” (v. 9). The final blow is oblivion: “no memory remains of former times, nor will there be any remembrance of future events among those who come after” (v. 11).

This text should not be tamed. It stands in Scripture as it is, and the Church reads it without adding consolation to it. Its function is to destroy the hope that man places in what he does under the sun, so that true hope may not be built on sand.

II. The Gospel: Lk 9:7-9

Herod Antipas, the tetrarch, hears the reports and is perplexed. The hypotheses in circulation are all of the same kind: John the Baptist risen, Elijah reappeared, one of the ancient prophets come back (vv. 7-8). All of them are, at bottom, Qoheleth’s thesis applied to religion. Nothing new. It is always someone who has already been here coming back.

Herod’s objection is remarkably cold: “John I had beheaded” (v. 9). He knows what he did and mentions it without any sign of remorse, like someone ruling out an explanation for technical reasons. And he ends with the right question, “who is this man, about whom I hear such things?”, followed by what cancels everything: “and he kept trying to see Jesus.”

Luke will save the outcome for the Passion. Herod will eventually see Jesus, and will be very glad, because “he was hoping to see him perform some miracle” (Lk 23:8). He will question Him at length and Jesus will give him no answer at all. Whoever seeks to see out of curiosity ends up facing silence, and silence is the exact answer to that kind of seeking.

III. Curiosity that never becomes faith

The distance between Herod and a disciple is not measured by information. Herod was well informed, heard everything that was said, formulated the correct Christological question, and even wanted to see with his own eyes. He lacked only what transforms curiosity into faith, which is the willingness to be changed by what one is going to encounter.

That is why Qoheleth’s cynicism and Herod’s perplexity resemble each other so closely. Whoever has already decided that nothing new can happen under the sun will arrange all the information he receives within that assumption. The hypotheses of the court, John risen or Elijah reappeared, are exactly that: attempts to fit the unprecedented into existing categories. And the unprecedented, when it appears, never fits into them.

IV. Mary and the only newness under the sun

If “nothing new under the sun” accurately describes human history left to itself, then it is worth saying where Scripture affirms the opposite. And the place is a house in Nazareth. What happened there is neither a cycle that repeats itself nor a prophet who returns. It is the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us (Jn 1:14), and it has no precedent whatsoever in the series of events.

The patristic tradition found the right formulation for this newness in calling Mary the new Eve. The Council takes it up and recalls that the ancient Fathers affirm that the knot of Eve’s disobedience was untied by Mary’s obedience, and that what the virgin Eve bound through unbelief, the Virgin Mary loosed through faith (LG 56, citing Saint Irenaeus). It is not a new cycle. It is a knot undone, and a knot undone does not go back to being what it was.

There is also the contrast with Herod, which Luke seems to build deliberately throughout his Gospel. Both hear about things they do not understand. Herod seeks to see and remains outside. Mary, before what she too does not understand, does something else: “she kept all these things, pondering them in her heart” (Lk 2:19). To keep is not to understand. It is to accept carrying within what has not yet been explained. That is how the newness found someone in whom it could fit.

Thursday of the Twenty-Fifth Week therefore leaves a question that separates two attitudes that look very similar from the outside. Do we seek to see, or do we seek to be changed? For Herod wanted the first as well, and was left with silence.