The Author Issue

I mentioned earlier that I taught Annual Conference Sunday School.  The lesson was on various verses of Ecclesiastes. 

We talked in the class about who wrote the book of Ecclesiastes.  The text itself says, “The words of the Teacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.”  Reading this, we might assume the author is Solomon, but he lived in 10^th Century BCE.  The earlest date of the book is probably 3rd century BCE.  Scholars can tell just by the Hebrew that was used that it doesn’t date any earlier than that.

There were a few people in the class who were very bothered by that.  They tried to find ways to confirm that Solomon wrote the book.  That led me to wonder why it mattered so much to them.  Is it Solomon's authority as a person of wisdom that he might lend to the book? Is it just that they can't get past the first verse where the author hints that he is Solomon?

And why does it matter so much to them?