Wisdom Literature: Home

" The Old Testament books of wisdom and poetry carry themselves differently from those of the Pentateuch, the histories or the prophets. The divine voice does not peal from Sinai, there are no narratives carried along by prophetic interpretation nor are oracles declaimed by a prophet. Here Scripture often speaks in the words of human response to God and God's world. The hymns, laments and thanksgivings of Israel, the dirge of Lamentations, the questionings of Qohelet, the love poetry of the Song of Songs, the bold drama of Job and the proverbial wisdom of Israel all offer their textures to this great body of biblical literature. Then too there are the finely crafted stories of Ruth and Esther that narrate the silent providence of God in the course of Israelite and Jewish lives. This third Old Testament volume in InterVarsity Press's celebrated "Black Dictionary" series offers nearly 150 articles covering all the important aspects of Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Psalms, Song of Songs, Lamentations, Ruth and Esther." - IVP Academic

"This is a new and ground-breaking study of the nature and origins of the earliest material in the book of Proverbs, drawing on evidence from Israel and neighbouring countries in the ancient Near East. This literature has widely been believed to have originated as pedagogical material, designed for the education of future administrators in the royal bureaucracy from the time of Solomon. That belief has played an important part not only in the interpretation of the texts, but in reconstructions of Israelite society and history. This book challenges this view, arguing that it is largely founded on assumptions which are now widely discredited, and sets out to re-evaluate the evidence in the light of more recent research. The conclusions drawn here will have important implications for the future study of this material from both a Christian and Jewish perspective, and for our understanding of ancient Israel's society and history." - OUP

"Israel's poets and sages left a scriptural legacy that has powerfully shaped the worship, thoughts and actions of the people of God. In the highs and lows and crossroads of life, we instinctively turn to their poetry, proverbs and discourses for the language we do not possess and the wisdom we desperately seek. Yet there is more to this literature than meets the eye--or fills the momentary need. A study of the Bible's wisdom and poetry will dramatically enhance its power and effectiveness. From the depths of lament to the heights of praise, from the eroticism of the Song of Songs to the hard realism of Ecclesiastes, and from the aphorisms of Proverbs to the discourses of Job, this guide introduces readers to the ancient background, the literary artistry, and the varied and timeless messages of the Psalms and Wisdom literature. Ernest C. Lucas gives us an informed, illuminating and interactive introduction to this portion of Scripture. Sparkling with interest and geared to the needs of students, this is an excellent textbook introduction to the Psalms and Wisdom literature." - InterVarsity Press

"This concise commentary, excerpted from the Fortress Commentary on the Bible: The Old Testament and Apocrypha, engages readers in the work of biblical interpretation. Contributors connect historical-critical analysis with sensitivity to current theological, cultural, and interpretive issues. Introductory articles describe the challenges of reading the Old Testament in ancient and contemporary contexts, relating the biblical theme of “the people of God” to our complex, multicultural world, and reading the Old Testament as Christian Scripture, followed by a survey of “Introduction to Wisdom and Worship: Themes and Perspectives in the Poetic Writings.” Each chapter (Job through Song of Songs) includes an introduction and commentary on the text...." - Fortress Press

"The focus of this volume is on both wisdom books and wisdom ideas. The first section surveys recent developments in the field of Old Testament wisdom, and the second section discusses some issues that have arisen in Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes, and examines the Song of Songs as a wisdom text. The final section explores wisdom in Ruth, in some Psalms, and in the broader field of Old Testament narrative (from Joshua to Esther), while also examining wisdom, biblical theology, the concept of retribution in wisdom, and the vexed issue of divine absence." - InterVarsity Press

"It can be a challenge to understand the Hebrew Bible's wisdom literature and how it relates to biblical history and theology, but John L. McLaughlin makes this complicated genre straightforward and accessible.This introductory-level textbook begins by explaining the meaning of wisdom to the Israelites and surrounding cultures before moving into the conventions of the genre and its poetic forms. The heart of the book examines Proverbs, Job, Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes), and the deuterocanonical Ben Sira and Wisdom of Solomon. McLaughlin also explores the influence of wisdom throughout the Old Testament and in the New Testament.Designed especially for beginning students—and based on twenty-five years of teaching Israel's wisdom literature to university students—McLaughlin's Introduction to Israel's Wisdom Traditions provides an informed, panoramic view of wisdom literature's place in the biblical canon." - Eerdmans

"Jewish wisdom flourished under Hellenism in the books of Ben Sira and the wisdom of Solomon, as well as in a recently discovered sapiential text from Qumran. In this book, now available as a casebound, internationally known author John Collins presents a compelling description and analysis of these three texts and their continuing wisdom traditions." - WJK Press

"In the rise of Wisdom Literature in less than a century from obscurity to ubiquity, a number of crucial questions have been left unanswered. Most fundamentally, when, how, and why did the category, comprised essentially of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job, develop? The definitional issues long plaguing Wisdom scholarship can be traced to that unquestioned “universal consensus.” This book unearths its origin, describes its distorting effect, and proposes an alternative approach. Absent from early Jewish and Christian interpretation, the Wisdom category first emerged in modern scholarship, with the traits associated with it, such as universalism, humanism, rationalism, and secularism, suspiciously mirroring the ideals of its nineteenth-century German birthplace. Since it was originally assembled to reflect modern values, biblical scholars have struggled to define the corpus on any other basis or integrate it into the theology of the Hebrew Bible. The problem, however, is not only why the texts were perceived in this way, but that they are perceived in only one way at all. This book builds on recent literary and cognitive theory to create an alternative approach to genre that integrates hermeneutical insight from various genre groupings. This theory is then applied to Job, Ecclesiastes, and Proverbs, mapping out the complex intertextual network contributing to each book’s meaning. Seen from multiple perspectives, these texts emerge in three dimensions, as facets previously obscured by the category are illuminated once again. The death of the Wisdom Literature category offers new life to both the so-called Wisdom texts and the concept of wisdom." - OUP

"This collection of essays examines the wisdom traditions of the Old Testament from a variety of angles. The slipperiness of the concept of 'wisdom literature', the transmission of 'wise' advice for living, rabbinic and patristic approaches to the Bible's wisdom traditions, and cutting-edge modern perspectives on such Old Testament books as Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes are all to be found here." - T&T Clark

""This volume is intended to problematize and challenge current conceptions of the category of "Wisdom" and to reconsider the scope, breadth and Nachleben of ancient Jewish Sapiential traditions. It considers the formal features and conceptual underpinnings of wisdom throughout the corpus of the Hebrew Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Hellenistic Jewish texts, Rabbinic texts, and the Cairo Geniza. It also situates ancient Jewish Wisdom in its Near Eastern context, as well as in the context of Hellenistic conceptions of the Sage." - Brill

"Wisdom's Wonder offers a fresh reading of the Hebrew Bible's wisdom literature with a unique emphasis on "wonder" as the framework for understanding biblical wisdom. William Brown argues that wonder effectively integrates biblical wisdom's emphasis on character formation and its outlook on creation, breaking an impasse that has plagued recent wisdom studies. Drawing on various disciplines, from philosophy to neuroscience, Brown discovers new distinctions and connections in Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes. Each book is studied in terms of its view of moral character and creation, as well as in terms of the social or intellectual crisis each book identifies. Most general treatments of the wisdom literature spend too much time on issues of genre, poetry, and social context at the neglect of discussing the intellectual and emotional power of the wisdom corpus. Brown argues that the real power of the wisdom corpus lies in its capacity to evoke the reader's sense of wonder." - Eerdmans

"This collection of articles confirms Norman Whybray's place as one of the foremost contributors to scholarship on wisdom literature in the last three decades of the twentieth century. A former President of the Society for Old Testament Study, and winner of the British Academy's Burkitt Medal, Whybray wrote extensively on Proverbs and Ecclesiastes and his interests extended to Job, Ben Sira, and wider areas of concern such as the relationship of wisdom to other Old Testament books and genres. Including a Foreword by David Clines and an Introduction by Katharine J. Dell, this collection brings together for the first time all of Norman Whybray's articles in this subject, thus not only inspiring afresh, but also providing a useful resource for scholars interested in that enigmatic group of writings that make up the wisdom literature of the Old Testament." - Routledge

"This new edition has been considerably expanded to take in work on the legal and didactic material published since the 1980s. It gives more attention to the different literary genres used by Israel's sages, and to the social settings in which the material came into existence and circulated. References to relevant archaeological data have also been brought up to date. The main purpose of the book, however, remains the same – to trace the course of two related key streams of tradition, law, and wisdom throughout the history of Israel in the biblical period, and to demonstrate their essential lines of continuity with classical Jewish thought and early Christian theology." - OUP

"Professor Maurice Gilbert SJ is widely acknowledged as one of the leading authorities on biblical wisdom literature, in particular the Book of Ben Sira and the Wisdom of Solomon, on which he has produced many publications. This Festschrift, the third one in his honor, brings together twenty-four essays written by both established scholars who are friends and colleagues of Professor Gilbert and younger members of the field who wrote their doctoral dissertation under his guidance at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome. There he was rector (1978–1984) and full professor until his retirement (1975–2011). The volume is divided into six main sections, focusing respectively on Proverbs, Job, Qoheleth, Sirach, Wisdom of Solomon, and Psalms. Some essays display rigorous attention to textual and linguistic issues, whereas others deal with more theological questions (fear before God, joy in Qoheleth, arguments for justice in Wisdom of Solomon) or focus on the comparison between two books (for instance, Qoheleth and Sirach, Sirach and Genesis, Sirach and Tobit)." - De Gruyter

"In this collection, an international group of specialists considers the nature of wisdom in relation to the thought world of the ancient Near East and its impact on the rest of the Old Testament. In addition to full coverage of the wisdom books and other literature most frequently thought to have been influenced by them, thematic studies also introduce the principal comparative sources among Israel's neighbours and discuss the place of wisdom in Israelite religion, theology, and society." - CUP

"Wisdom in Classical and Biblical Tradition begins with the recognition that modern culture emerged from a synthesis of the legacies of ancient Greek civilization and the theological perspectives of the Jewish and Christian scriptures. Part of what made this synthesis possible was a shared outlook: a common aspiration toward wholeness of understanding that refused to separate knowledge from goodness, virtue from happiness, cosmos from polis, and divine authority from human responsibility. This wholeness of understanding, or wisdom, featured prominently in both classical and biblical literatures as an ultimate good.Michael Legaspi has two central aims. The first is to explain in formal terms what wisdom is. Though wisdom involves matters of practical judgment affecting the life of the individual and the community, it has also been identified with an understanding of the world and of the ultimate realities that give meaning to human thought and action. In its traditional form, wisdom was understood to govern intellectual, social, and ethical endeavors. His second aim is to analyze figures and texts that have yielded and shaped the traditional understanding of wisdom. The book examines accounts of wisdom within foundational texts that range from the period of Homer to the destruction of the Second Temple. In doing so, it explains why the search for wisdom remains an important but problematic endeavor today." - OUP

"This classic text, the last major work by the great Hebrew Bible scholar Gerhard von Rad, has long been unavailable in North America. It is now being reissued in paperback from to satisfy the continuing demand for copies of the book.In brief, the subject of von Rad's study of Hebrew wisdom is Israel's willingness to ground faith in encounter with the world as the creation of God.Those familiar with the author's Old Testament Theology will recall how he identified two great watersheds in the history of Israel's thought. The first was the rise of the prophetic movement, which occasioned a radical reinterpretation of Israel's religious traditions as expressed in the earliest creedal formulations found in the Pentateuch. The second watershed, which preceded the prophetic movement and was a basically different assessment of Israel's relation to Yahweh, was achieved by wisdom teachers at the start of the monarchy. This book studies this first and somewhat novel break with Israel's older sacral traditions. Von Rad bases the study on a wide range of literary materials principally concerned with the books of Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, and the Wisdom of Ben Sirach." - Trinity Press International

"In this volume, Richard J. Clifford seeks to make the biblical wisdom literature intelligible to modern readers. It is easy to quote the occasional proverb, say a few things about "the problem of evil" in Job, or quote "vanity of vanities, " but far more rewarding to read the whole book with an appreciative and informed eye. Opening chapters of The Wisdom Literature comment on the striking similarities between ancient and modern "wisdom literature" and on the comparable literature from ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Canaan. Thereafter, a chapter is devoted to each biblical wisdom book (Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Sirach, and Wisdom of Solomon), studying not only its content but also its rhetoric -- how it engages the reader." - Abingdon Press