“Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher; “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.”
⛓ Read Ecclesiastes 1 forward — the whole chapter and its afterlife →Where this passage surfaces again, sorted by the strength of the link. Each kind of reuse — formal quotation, deliberate allusion, faint echo, figural pattern — carries its own mark. Follow any reference to read it in place.
Allusion1
A deliberate verbal borrowing without a citation formula.
Creation 'subjected to vanity' (mataiotes, v.20) reuses the Septuagint's rendering of hevel ('vanity of vanities'); Qoheleth's diagnosis of the cosmos's futile, breath-like emptiness is the condition from which creation longs for release.
Medium confidenceEcho1
A fainter, low-volume reuse, carried by recurrence or thematic coherence.
"Vanity of vanities, all is vanity" undergirds the assertion that the world and its lusts are passing away. The fleeting emptiness of all under the sun matches John's contrast with the one who abides forever.
Medium confidence