Jesus

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Jesus Wisdom
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Authors addressed questions such as these

• What does it mean to be a wise person?
• What is the meaning and purpose of life? where
  are we going?
• Why do good people suffer and bad people prosper?
  Why should we be good in a world that is unfair?
• How can we live good and faithful lives when
  surrounded by those who are hostile to our
  beliefs?

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Wisdom Literature

• Israels wisdom books speak to the individual
  about the wholeness and integrity of a good life,
  and about the personal disintegration caused by
  sin.
• The goal of the biblical teachers of wisdom was
  to inspire moral integrity.

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Proverbs

• What is a Good Life?

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• The book of Proverbs content
• consists of several collections of wisdom
  teachings
• intended to instruct the youth especially.
• There is no hint of an afterlife
• Most of the sayings do not mention God.
• Describes wisdom as Lady Sophia
• The book of Proverbs the author
• is introduced as the proverbs of Solomon, the
  son of David, king of Israel
• Solomon was the traditional patron of wisdom, as
  David was the traditional composer of psalms.

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Proverbs

• Proverbs is concerned with how to live a good
  life
• Its full down-to-earth, practical advice.
• The following are examples..
• Leadership
• If a ruler listens to falsehood,/ all his
  officials will be wicked (2912
• Gossip
• A perverse person spreads strife,/ and a
  whisperer separates close friends (1628
• Learning
• A fool takes no pleasure in understanding,/ but
  only in expressing personal opinion (182)

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Proverbs God

• Where is God in all this wisdom?
• Most of the sayings do not mention God.
• The perspective of the Jewish sages was the true
  wisdom is from God, no matter where we find it
• In the advice of family and friends
• In common sense
• In nature
• Even in other cultures with their appealing
  wisdom sayings
• The sages saw the world as full of Gods wisdom

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Lady wisdom

• In chapters 8 9, wisdom is portrayed poetically
  as a woman who came forth from God in the
  beginning before the world was created.
• She was with God as the master worker while the
  heavens and the earth were made

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Wisdoms feminine voice

• Proverbs image of Gods wisdom as a woman adds a
  feminine voice and quality to the traditional
  Jewish image of God as masculine.
• This feminine image of wisdom has been called
  Sophia
• After the Greek word for wisdom- Shekina
• God is neither man nor woman
• God is personal but transcends the human
  categories of gender.

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Biblical tradition

• The biblical writers used male and female images
  to describe God because that was what they knew
  of persons from their human experience.
• Catholic Tradition has often read the passages on
  wisdom in the OT as related to Mary, the mother
  of God.
• Mary is called the Seat of Wisdom in some prayers
  of the liturgy.

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Proverbs wk
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JOB

• Why Do the Good Suffer?

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Answer the ??s

• Why good people have a miserable life of poverty,
  sickness, and rejection?
• Why the wicked people have comfortable lives?
• How do you explain that?
• Why does a mother of three young children die?
• Why do people starve in a famine while others
  have so much food they dont know what to do with
  it?

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The book of Job

• The power of the book lies in the directness with
  which it addresses a basic human problem
• the righteous suffer while the wicked prosper.
• The dilemma of why the good suffer and the wicked
  prosper in this life is known as the problem of
  evil.

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The author

• The author struggled with that dilemma of the
  problem of evil and wrote a poetic story
• The author is NOT Job

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• The prologue sets the stage by telling how Job
  lost everything in a single day because of an
  arrangement between God and Satan.

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• A virtuous and prosperous man named Job loses
  everything
• Wealth, family, and health
• He bears his suffering patiently, trusting in,
  not questioning God.
• He is a model of patience and resignation.
• He is not Israelite

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• Job did not believe in an afterlife where good
  could be rewarded and evil punished.
• He thought that rewards and punishments had to be
  given out in this life, or never at all.

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• The figure of Satan in the story is not meant to
  be the devil but a heavenly prosecutor whose job
  is to test the genuineness of human virtue.
• The author used this angel merely as a device to
  get the story moving
• Not to imply that God ever initiates human
  suffering.

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• In his suffering Job finally calls out, Why?
  and curses the day he was born.
• His friends insist that Jobs sin must be the
  reason for his misfortune, that if he prays to
  God and repents, all will be well again.
• But Job disagrees, arguing with them in a series
  of disputes.

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God and Job wk