Baudrillard heads his essay: ‘Simulacra and Simulations’ (already quoted from on 5th Jan) with these lines from Ecclesiastes:

The simulacrum is never what hides the truth – it is truth that hides the fact that there is none. The simulacrum is true.

This powerful introduction, not so much header as headstone, sets the tone for the whole piece, an excoriation of the 20th century consumer dream made reality, that in Baudrillard’s view:

Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it are no longer real, but of the order of the hyperreal and of simulation. It is no longer a question of a false representation of reality (ideology), but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer real.

It is therefore appropriate that this quote from Ecclesiastes is a fake. Even the word simulacrum was only first recorded as being used in the English language in the 16th Century.

Here’s some genuine verses from Ecclesiastes:

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together…
(Ecclesiastes 3: 1-5, King James Version)

Given my current interests, I particularly like the last line of this quote.