Introduction to Wisdom Literature

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Introduction to Wisdom Literature

• BIB509

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1 Introduction

• 1.1 Certain books within the Hebrew scriptures
  stand out as significantly different from the
  narrative and legal material comprising the
  Pentateuch as well as from prophetic and
  apocalyptic literature. This alien corpus is
  altogether silent with regard to the dominant
  themes found in the rest of the Bible, for
  example the promise to the patriarchs, the
  deliverance from Egypt, the Mosaic covenant, the
  centrality of Jerusalem and the Davidic dynasty,
  the prophetic word, and so forth. Crenshaw,
  Wisdom Literature Biblical Books, 1

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1 Introduction

• 1.2 In the place of such emphases one finds
  ideas and literary forms that are closer to
  certain Egyptian and Mesopotamian works. That
  literary corpus contains a rational principle of
  the cosmic order that is worthy of study (hmkx in
  ancient Israel, ????? in Egypt, me in
  Mesopotamia) and expresses a belief that conduct
  in accord with this principle brings well-being.
  Or the literature gives voice to various levels
  of doubt about the validity of this understanding
  of reality, a skepticism spawned lifes
  inequities. Since study of the underlying
  principle of the universe rather than
  proclamation of the divine word comes to
  prominence here, modern scholars designate these
  texts as wisdom literature. Crenshaw

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2. Definition Terminology

• 2.1 . . . formally, wisdom consists of
  proverbial sentence or instruction, debate,
  intellectual reflection thematically, wisdom
  comprises self-evident intuitions about mastering
  life for human betterment, gropings after lifes
  secrets with regard to innocent suffering,
  grappling with finitude, and quest for truth
  concealed in the created order and manifested in
  Dame Wisdom. When a marriage between form and
  content exists, there is wisdom literature.
  Lacking such oneness, a given text participates
  in biblical wisdom to a greater or lesser
  extent. Crenshaw, Old Testament Wisdom An
  Introduction, 16-19

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2. Definition Terminology

• 2.2 "Biblical wisdom was a dynamic in ancient
  Israel that operated in three dimensions the
  personal, universal, and literary. The personal
  dimension was characterized by both theological
  and practical categories. The universal dimension
  dealt with the ultimate categories of theology,
  explaining wisdom as an attribute of God Himself.
  the literary dimension was merely the vehicle of
  the wisdom movement, inscripturating the
  propositions and precepts of wisdom for
  posterity." Bullock

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3. Wisdom Genres

• 3.1 The Saying "The Saying is a sentence
  normally expressed in the indicative mood, and
  usually based on experience. Three types . . .
  the Proverb, the experiential Saying, and the
  didactic Saying." Murphy

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3. Wisdom Genres

• 3.1.1 "The Proverb draws a conclusion from
  experience and formulates it in a pithy, succinct
  way for such a conclusion to become truly
  proverbial, it must gain currency among a people.
  . . . It would appear that very few popular
  proverbs have been preserved in the wisdom
  literature at least, it is extremely difficult
  to make a case for certain sayings as having been
  popular proverbs before they were collected for
  the book for Proverbs."

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3. Wisdom Genres

• 3.1.2 "An experiential (or observational) Saying
  merely presents some aspects of reality. It tells
  it "the way it is," and leaves the practical
  conclusion(s) for the hearer/reader to draw. . .
  . Such sayings, therefore, remain open for
  further verification, even for limitation. They
  are essentially tied to the experience from which
  they derive, and to the tradition (handed down
  among those who found them meaningful) that gave
  them status and importance." Murphy

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3. Wisdom Genres

• 3.1.3 "The didactic (or learned) Saying goes
  beyond a mere statement about reality it
  characterizes a certain act or attitude in such a
  way as to influence human conduct. Some value is
  being inculcated, and this can be done in several
  ways. . . ." Murphy

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3. Wisdom Genres

• 3.2 Commands and Prohibitions
• "The sage instructed not only by offering the
  lessons enshrined in sayings. He also imposed his
  will by a Command (imperative or jussive mood) or
  by a Prohibition. These commands and prohibition
  appear in the genre of Instruction. But they also
  appear in isolated form in Proverbs and
  Ecclesiastes. At times the command will be in
  parallelism with the prohibition, and both are
  saying the same thing. . . ." Murphy

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3. Wisdom Genres

• 3.3 Instruction
• "The genre of Instruction is found consistently
  in "the words of the wise" in Prov 22.17-24.22,
  that bear a resemblance to the Egyptian
  Instructing of Amenemope. The same genre receives
  a certain development in Proverbs 1-9, where the
  units are much longer than the customary
  prohibition and motive clause that characterize
  22.17-24.22." Murphy

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3. Wisdom Genres

• 3.4 Disputation
• "The formal elements of the dispute between Job
  and his friends derive primarily from three
  domains. Wisdom instruction provides both
  isolated individual forms and the "disputations
  of the wise," found in Egyptian literature and
  presupposed by I Kings 10.1ff. The legal system
  provides both the individual forms associated
  with a legal action and the "litigants' addresses
  to the court," since the judges were often
  trained in wisdom schools. Cultic poetry
  furnishes mostly the rhetorical and stylistic
  forms used in laments and hymns." Fohrer

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3. Wisdom Genres

• 3.5 Summary-Appraisal Formula - Appeal to Ancient
  Tradition (See Habel on Job and B. Childs on
  Isaiah)
• 3.6 Reflections
• "The Reflection is characteristic of Ecclesiastes
  . . . . The term designates a text that is
  characterized by observation and thought, and
  hence has a fairly loose structure. It will
  utilize phrases such as, "I said in my heart"
  (1.16-17 2.1, 15 3.17), "I gave my heart to
  know" (1.13, 17 8.16), "I saw (again)" (1.14
  2.14, 24, passim), "I know" (1.17 3.12, 14
  etc.), and rhetorical questions (e.g., 2.2, 12,
  15, 19, 22, 25). The Reflection will actually
  incorporate sever subgenres, such as a saying or
  proverb (2.14 4.5-6, etc.). . . ." Murphy

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4. Wisdom Sitz im Leben

• 1. "The first possible is the home, where
  parental instruction would have been imparted to
  the children and would have been oral."
• 2. "The second possible setting is the school,
  where a teacher-student relationship would be
  found."

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5. Thought World of Wisdom

• 5.1 "The most striking characteristic is the
  absence of elements generally considered to be
  typically Israelite the promises to the
  patriarchs, the Exodus experience, the Sinai
  covenant, etc. . . the rule salvation history
  is absent from the realm of wisdom. Another way
  of putting this is to say that wisdom is an
  international heritage in which Israel had a
  share." Murphy

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5. Thought World of Wisdom

• 5.2 "One can indeed distinguish between saving
  history (Exodus, covenant, etc.) and an
  experiential attitude toward lifes daily events.
  But this distinction existed in the one Israelite
  individual who worshipped yhwh and denominated
  yhwh as God. Those same Israelites ultimately
  canonized the Wisdom Literature as a genuine
  expression of their traditions. . . . The fact of
  the matter is that there is no incompatibility
  between the saving God of history and the God of
  human experience." Murphy

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5. Thought World of Wisdom

• 5.3 "Biblical wisdom is basically religious, not
  secular. The fateful distinction between
  religious and secular, sacred and profane, so
  widely accepted in modern culture, has been
  applied in much too wholesale a fashion to the
  Bible." Murphy

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5. Thought World of Wisdom

• 5.4 "There seems to be a general consensus that
  biblical wisdom connotes a search for "order".
  That is to say, the sages held that there was a
  fundamental order in the world, discernible by
  experience, and the teachings were designed to
  bring about conformity with this order that had
  been determined by God." Murphy

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5. Thought World of Wisdom

• 5.5 Koch argued that wisdom taught a unique
  concept of reward/punishment ". . . there is no
  retribution or intervention by God rather, deed
  and result are mechanically related. An evil deed
  produces an evil result a good deed produces a
  good result. Hence Koch speaks of a
  "destiny-producing" deed the Lord does not
  intervene."
• "Instead, one should recognize that the OT
  sources present retribution from two points of
  view both divine intervention and
  destiny-producing action. There is no evidence
  that one view is earlier than the other or, for
  that matter, more religious than the other.
  Certainly a cardinal affirmation in the Bible is
  the primary activity of the Lord in all that
  happens."

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5. Thought World of Wisdom

• 5.6 The doctrine of the sages, especially as
  expressed in Proverbs and in the speeches of
  Jobs three friends, easily give the impression
  of a rigid dogmatism. This is misleading. The
  sages believed in their teachings, and like all
  teachers expressed themselves in such ways as to
  gain adherents. Exaggeration is one mode of
  convincing students. When one turns to the books
  of Job and Ecclesiastes, there is no escape from
  the hard questions that are put to the reigning
  wisdom orthodoxy. But even here one has to
  acknowledge that these hard questions arise from
  within the wisdom movement. Murphy

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6. Wisdoms Contribution to OT Theology

• 6.1 Wisdom Creation
• Creation and Salvation Isa 44.24-28 51.9-10
• Creation Doxologies Amos 4.13 5.8-9 9.5-6
• Creation in Wisdom literature Job 38-40 Prov 8
  Pss 8, 19, 54, 104 Qoheleth
• "When creation doctrine is not valued in and for
  itself, there also wisdom is treated as
  marginal." Murphy

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6. Wisdoms Contribution to OT Theology

• 6.2 Wisdom Experience
• "One cannot describe the biblical Wisdom
  Literature without trying to understand the
  experience that lies behind it. The sayings, or
  the wisdom teaching, are the encoding of a
  lived experience, and only facets of this
  encounter with reality can be captured in words.
  It is the encounter which generated the insights
  into the world and human beings." Murphy

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6. Wisdoms Contribution to OT Theology

• 6.3 Wisdom Moral Action
• "Akin to the wisdom experience is the "way" which
  wisdom urges the Israelite to walk in. The most
  common word is derek (about 75 times in
  Proverbs), but it is often interchangeable with
  )o4rah9, as in the phrase, way of life (Prov
  219 56 623 1524). This is the way that
  leads to, or secures, life in the full sense,
  prosperity and a relationship to the Lord. The
  way itself is the conduct which incarnates the
  teachings of the sage honesty, diligence (Prov
  104 2614), self-control (1417 151), a sense
  of responsibility (1026 272327), etc."

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6. Wisdoms Contribution to OT Theology

• 6.4 Wisdom Skepticism
• ". . . the problem of divine justice becomes the
  problem for the sages. . . . . it is hard to deal
  with adversity that can find no reasonable
  explanation. A human standard of justice is
  applied to God, and it does not work. This
  situation is often termed the "crisis" of wisdom
  (Crenshaw 1985a 381), and the books of Job and
  Ecclesiastes are the prime evidence. But it can
  be just as well argued that these works prove the
  resilience of the wisdom movement, which did not
  skirt problems, even if it could not solve them.
  The scepticism of these books is in conflict
  with the retribution theory of Proverbs (and of
  Deuteronomy and other books, one may add)."

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6. Wisdoms Contribution to OT Theology

• 6.5 The Personification of Wisdom
• "Participating in the divine mystery is the
  figure of Lady Wisdom which appears in Job 28
  Proverbs 1, 8, 9 Baruch 3944 Sirach 24 Wis
  77918. It is better to speak of
  personification than hypostasis (Marcus 195051).
  Personification is no stranger to the Hebrew
  Bible. Justice leads Israel out of Babylon (Isa
  584) in Ps 8411 kindness and truth meet,
  justice and peace kiss. Wine is arrogant (Prov
  201). But the personification of wisdom is
  simply unique in the Bible, both for its quantity
  and quality."

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6. Wisdoms Contribution to OT Theology

• 6.6 Wisdom Immortality
• "It has been observed often enough that the goal
  of wisdom is life (Murphy 1966). That is to say,
  life in this world, marked by prosperity and
  blessing, a fullness of days until one was
  finally buried with the fathers. The Hebrew world
  displayed a remarkable resignation to the
  inevitability of death (e.g., Psalm 49).
  Nonetheless it gradually became a problem with
  the sages. The thought of Job is constantly
  hovering between life and death, light and
  darkness (3223 101822 141020)."

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7. Extra-Biblical Wisdom

• 7.1 Extra-Biblical Wisdom
• 7.1.1 "Israels ceaseless search for knowledge,
  divine presence, meaning, and survival was part
  of a larger quest in the ancient Near East.
  Scattered allusions within the Hebrew Bible to
  the wisdom of the Easterners and the Egyptians
  (Genesis 418 Exodus 711 2 Kings 430 Heb.
  59-10 Isaiah 1911-15) have assumed greater
  force again and again as literature form Egypt
  and Mesopotamia has come to light. Similarities
  between the Israelite wisdom and that of her
  powerful neighbors to the south and east abound,
  but decisive differences also exist." Crenshaw,
  Old Testament Wisdom An Introduction, 212

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7. Extra-Biblical Wisdom

• 7.2 Wisdom in Egypt
• 1. "Egyptian wisdom functioned almost exclusively
  at the royal court. Its aim was to provide proper
  education for future bureaucrats in the pharaohs
  court. Accordingly, this literature largely
  assumed the form of instruction (e.g., the
  Instruction of Ptahhotep, the Instruction of King
  Amenemhet to His Son Sesostris, and the
  Instruction for Merikare) and its setting was
  usually the scribal school (praise of which
  occurs in Papyrus Sallier, Papyrus Anastasi, and
  the Instruction of a Man for His Son)." James L.
  Crenshaw, "Wisdom Literature Biblical Books"

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7.2 Wisdom in Egypt

• 2. Extends from 2800 to 100 BCE From the Fifth
  Dynasty (Prince Hardjedef) to the Ptolemaic
  Period.
• 3. "For convenience, Egyptian sapiential
  literature may be divided into text which
  consciously endeavor to inculcate traditional
  morals and practical lessons from experience, and
  those which challenge societys givens because of
  adverse social changes that have rendered life
  hazardous at best." Crenshaw, Old Testament
  Wisdom An Introduction, 212

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7.2 Wisdom in Egypt

• 4. The fundamental concept which underlies these
  Instruction is maat, which may be translated as
  justice, order, truth. Crenshaw, Old Testament
  Wisdom An Introduction, 214

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7.2 Wisdom in Egypt

• 5. It is the divine order in the world into
  which a human being is to be integrated by his
  conduct. Success in this process of integration
  means prosperity failure means chaos. This
  harmonious integration into maat underlies the
  teachings. Roland E. Murphy, Wisdom in the
  OT, Anchor Bible Dictionary, CD-Rom Edition,
  (New York Doubleday, 1992, 1997)

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7. Extra-Biblical Wisdom

• 7.3 Wisdom in Mesopotamia
• 1. "In Mesopotamia the study of school texts also
  played an important role, but the fundamental
  feature of wisdom was cultic, indeed, magical,
  and the goal of wisdom was to manipulate the
  paraphernalia of the cult in order to ensure
  ones existence." Crenshaw, Wisdom Literature
  Biblical Books, 1
• 2. "Here, as in Egypt, writing and schools
  flourished already in the 3d millennium b.c. In
  the Sumerian e-dubba (house of tablets) or
  school, the scribes copied out in cuneiform signs
  many types of literature, some of which may be
  compared with Hebrew wisdom. Several collections
  of proverbs (many bilingual, in both Sumerian and
  Akkadian) have been published along with various
  literary types such as fables." Murphy

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7.3 Wisdom in Mesopotamia

• 3. "As was the case with Egypt, there is a
  reflective literature in ancient Mesopotamia that
  has suggested comparison with Job and
  Ecclesiastes. Discussed in this literature, the
  issue is a perennial one, namely that of
  suffering, and especially the suffering of the
  righteous. . . ." Murphy

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7. Extra-Biblical Wisdom

• 7.3 Hellenistic Literature
• 1. "Sophia, or wisdom, is of course a well-known
  concept in Greek philosophy and literature.
  Alexanders conquest of the Fertile Crescent in
  the 4th century b.c. ensured the flourishing of
  Hellenistic culture which had already begun in
  the area (Hengel 1974). . . ." Murphy

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7. Extra-Biblical Wisdom

• 7.4 Uniqueness of Israelite Wisdom
• 1. "Old Testament Wisdom differs from its ancient
  counterparts in certain key respects. First,
  Israelite Wisdom in the canonical context
  unwaveringly integrates faith into lifes daily
  details. In these books the fear of the Lord is
  the beginning (Prov 1.7) and sum total (Job
  28.28) of wisdom regardless of that wisdoms
  particular arena. When trying to separate early
  from late Wisdom traditions in Israel, some
  scholars differentiate between secular and sacred
  material, with the former type considered the
  older of the two. The belief that secular Wisdom
  gradually moved toward religious expressions is
  an unproved developmental view of this
  literatures emergence. The canon makes no such
  distinction. Rather it always makes ones
  relationship to God the reason one is able to
  become wise. Everything one does proves or
  disproves ones relationship with or fear of the
  Lord."

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7.4 Uniqueness of Israelite Wisdom

• 2. "Second, Israel confessed that only one God
  exists. Thus only one God is able to inspire or
  impart wisdom. God possessed wisdom before the
  foundation of the world, which his status as
  Creator demonstrates (cf. Job 28 Prov 8). The
  Old Testaments insistence that the one God is
  the Creator undergirds all Wisdoms theological
  formulations. As Creator and only deity, the Lord
  is the only source for wisdom that allows human
  beings the means to let faith permeate life. Thus
  Israels desire for successful living parallels
  that of other countries, as does its use of
  particular literary tools for satisfying that
  desire. But its means of achieving that goal
  clearly diverges from its neighbors." R. House,
  Old Testament Theology, (Downers Grove, Illinois
  InterVarsity Press, 1998), 425