Where does the phrase " nothing new under the sun" come from?

Question

Where does the phrase " nothing new under the sun" come from?

Answer 1

Idioms: nothing new under the sun

Everything has been seen before, as in Those designs take me back to the 1950s--there really is nothing new under the sun. This world-weary view was already expressed in 1382 in the Bible translation attributed to John Wycliffe's followers: "No thing under the sun is new" (Ecclesiastes 1:9).

Bible Dictionary: nothing new under the sun

A phrase adapted from the Book of Ecclesiastes; the author complains frequently in the book about the monotony of life. The entire passage reads, “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”

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Proverbs: There is nothing new under the sun

With allusion to ecclesiastes i. 9 (AV) There is no new thing under the sun.

Under the large Cope of heauen, we see not a new thing.

[1592 G. Delamothe French Alphabet ii. 7]

There is no new thing under the sun.

[1664 A. Bradstreet Works (1867) 53]

We can no longer say there is nothing new under the sun.

[1801 T. Jefferson Writings (1904) X. 229]

There is nothing new under the sun; all that, is stale and trite to a septuagenarian, who has seen where it all ends.

[1850 C. Kingsley Alton Locke I. xviii.]

Cliché is the element in which political hacks live and move and have our being. Not just situation cliché. There is nothing new under the sun in politics.

[2002 Times 4 Jan. 16]

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Answer 2

A phrase adapted from the Book of Ecclesiastes; the author complains frequently in the book about the monotony of life. The entire passage reads, “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”