‘No One Remembers!’: Qoheleth and John Mbiti’s African Cosmology of Time, Land, and Memory

Time, memory, and the natural world shape how humans relate to the environment and to one another. Qoheleth observes that “Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever” (Eccl 1:4), portraying a natural world that endures while human generations pass away. Within this vision, Qoheleth presents nature as indifferent to human striving, where human achievements fade into forgetfulness. This paper contends that African cosmological perspectives on land, memory, and relational time, as articulated by John S. Mbiti, provide a robust hermeneutic for rereading Qoheleth. In many African traditions, land functions not only as a physical environment but as a living repository of communal memory linking the living and the ancestors. While Qoheleth highlights the fragility of human remembrance, African cosmology emphasizes how land sustains memory and identity across generations. Through this dialogue, this paper offers a fresh perspective on the relationship between time, land, and human identity.