[Eliezer]

Poetic but blatantly false.

Actually, you really wonder how Ecclesiastes managed to get included in the Bible, considering that at this point the Earth was supposed to be four thousand years old or whatever. And yet even 4.5 billion years isn't old enough for everything to have happened, not even close. Aren't exponential possibility spaces wonderful?

[davidmathers]

Poetic but blatantly false.

False now, but true at the time. For most people who have ever lived, nothing new happened during their lifetimes.

[Radix]

I agree with David Mathers. I believe that time has given you enough perspective to put you more than one level above Solomon.

Its poetry is enough reason for me to see it in the Bible, and it reminds us that fame and money themselves are useless.

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/09/level-above.html

[ahoyhere]

If you take it to mean human nature and the completely cyclical patterns of human behavior, then it's most certainly correct. That's how I've always interpreted it.

[davidmathers]

Verse 9 is about behavior:

  What has been will be again, 
       what has been done will be done again

Verse 10 is about things:

  Is there anything of which one can say, 
       "Look! This is something new"?

I think verse 9 is false. Remember one of the ways Solomon got his pleasure: "I bought male and female slaves and had other slaves who were born in my house." That's the only thing I can think of though.

[ahoyhere]

Why does the case of Solomon's slaves negate verse 9?

There has always been slavery, and there is still slavery today, and lots of explicitly sexual slavery too.