WISDOM AND THE BIBLE.
WISDOM AND THE BIBLE
Bible scholars use the term “wisdom” in a variety of ways. The noun hokmah and adj. hakam are used in narrative texts to designate innate intelligence, shrewd ideas of behaviors, artistic and administrative skill, or sound judgment. To be wise in Bible stories is to be clever, have a unique aptitude or skill, or just have a good head on your shoulders.
In the Hebrew Bible we find Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes, likely written in that order. We have other examples of Israelite wisdom literature in Ben Sira (called Sirach or Ecclesiasticus) and the Wisdom of Solomon. These latter books are included in the Greek Septuagint (Greek translation of the Bible from around 250 BCE), and the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic canons, but not the Hebrew Bible or the Protestant canon. By canon we simply mean the list of accepted books used as sacred scripture within those traditions.
In Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes, “wisdom” is used to describe a few things. First, wisdom is an attitude of mind that enables a person to see patterns in human experience. And secondly, a wise person ca lear and eventually teach of these observations in forms like proverbs, tales, etc.
This means that to be “wise” in the wisdom books, is to reflect on what one observes from life and to pay attention to the observations of others, to sift through and weigh one’s own experiences over against the testimonies of other wise people (Ecc. 12:9). This can look different in discrete books of the Bible. The wisdom of Proverbs is far from that of Jobs and Ecclesiastes. In fact, Job and Ecclesiastes seems to refute conventional wisdom of proverbs with the observation of uncertainty and the frustrations of the human condition. So instead of thinking of wisdom as an ideology or a set of sure propositions, it seems more accurate to say that wisdom is a method of inquiry, forms of teaching, and the weighing and understanding of things observed in life.
HOW DOES A PERSON BECOME WISE?
According to the wisdom books, wisdom is not achieved by merely acquiring a large body of knowledge. Becoming wise requires the ability to choose what learning and knowledge is use in each context. It is the artful and nuanced application of knowledge under God. Wisdom is also understood in these books as something that can be only partially grasped— like as humans we can only go so far in our understanding. Wisdom is a attained in part through human effort (Prov. 4:5-7), and as a gift from God (Prov. 2:6), but is unattainable in its entirety (except by God) (Ecc. 3:11; Job 28:23). Trusting God’s perspective above our own, or “the fear of the Lord” is tantamount to wisdom for the authors of Job, Ecclesiastes, and Proverbs.
WISDOM BOOKS AND ISRAELITE HISTORY
The signs and wonders of God in Israel’s history are nowhere mentioned in the wisdom literature—the exodus, giving of the law at Sinai, crossing the Jordan…nada. These books do not look at Israel’s salvation history, but focus rather on the mundane— the wisdom that works in the ordinary stuff of life. This gives the wisdom literature an appeal outside of the limits of Israel as a nation.
God’s covenant with Israel is rarely mentioned, but there are references to his creation of the world. What permeates wisdom literature is the idea that the universe has a groove. God designed the cosmos with a moral or ethical balance, sway, or order. The wise person observes what works and learns to do it consistently and apply the right knowledge to the right problems. Proverbs gives a the positive side of this idea, whereas Ecclesiastes and Job push back on the notion. The latter books vie that a person can do the right thing and still experience pain and hardship— it is the dark side of wisdom. The thing is… both sides of the discussion are true.
PROVERBS AS CONVENTIONAL WISDOM
“Proverbs” as a literary or rhetorical genre are short, pithy sayings that make generally true observations about some aspect of human experience. The preface of the book refers to the material as “the words of the wise” (1:6). Respect for God’s revelation is said to be the origin and goal of wisdom thinking (1:7; 2:1-5). And whoever finds wisdom, “finds life and obtains favor from the Lord.”
Prov. 1-9 contains long, personalized, advice-giving speeches directed to a listener called “my son.” They urge the learner to do whatever he can to acquire wisdom at all costs; to ignore the folly of sexual temptation and youthful pleasure and to head towards knowledge, shrewdness, nuance, and understanding. Wisdom is personified in these chapters, as Lady Wisdom, who calls out in the streets for anyone willing to learn and seek her.
In the first verse of chapter 10, the speeches give way to short compact sayings (proverbs) each expressing a thought in one sentence of two parallel lines. They are like little gems of Hebrew poetry. Some of them find a better context in antiquity, while others are simply timeless. To know which ones to apply…well you have to become wise :D The Overall message of Proverbs suggests that human beings have the ability and opportunity to make choices that have relatively predictable outcomes in their lives. The wise learn and do likewise, the foolish have not a clue.
JOB AS THE PUSH BACK ON CONVENTIONAL WISDOM
Job and Ecclesiastes offer a different perspective entirely. These books challenge the sanguine assumption that there is a consistent link between human behavior and the quality or length of life. Job is described as an upright man; a faithful worshiper of the Lord (Job 1:1, 8; 2:3). The introduction makes it clear that Job has done nothing to deserve the tragedy and suffering that affects him and his family.
Job’s friends who come to “comfort” Job proffer the predominant perspective found in the book of Proverbs, Psalm 1, and other places that wise and faithful choices lead to happiness, prosperity, and long life. His friends thus assume that Job’s suffering is the result of wrongdoing (Job 4:7-8). Job struggles with his own reality as innocent sufferer and questions the proverbial optimism. Job asks why the wicked reach old age and grow powerful, prosper, etc. (21:7, 13a). In the final scene, God says to Job’s three friends, “you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has” (42:7).
The theory of retribution (the idea that righteousness brings material and calm seas and wickedness brings punishment) does not adequately explain what happened to Job. The book of Job is often called a “theodicy”—an effort to interpret why suffering and evil take place within a larger theological perspective.
Job was seen as a historical narrative by the early church fathers, based on the LXX’s identification of Job as Jobab (great name for a dog…), a grandson of Esau, and Ezekiel’s naming of Job as a figure whose righteousness was exemplary (Ezek 14:14, 20). At least one Talmudic commentator saw Job as a mashal (a wisdom genre usually translated “proverb”), and the Eastern Church consistently treated it as a wisdom book. I would treat it as exile personified…think on that one.
THE LIGHT AND DARK SIDE OF THE ANE FORCE
Proverbs is sometimes said to be a collection of “conservative” wisdom traditions (supporting and promoting the status quo), while Job and Ecclesiastes challenge that predominant viewpoint. Job, for instance, calls into question the dominant structures and beliefs represented by Proverbs.
We might say that Job and Ecclesiastes seek to challenge those who try to make the contextually relevant observations in Proverbs into statements of absolute truth (as Job’s friends tried to do).
Like wisdom literature in Israel, Egyptian and Mesopotamian wisdom texts can be divided into “conservative” traditions, promoting the status quo (like Proverbs), and “skeptical” traditions, which question traditional teachings (like Job and Ecclesiastes). I like to think of it as the light side and the dark side of the force.
THE LIGHT SIDE
A number of conservative wisdom-teaching documents have survived, many containing practical advice directed toward youths who aspire to hold positions at court. Best known is the “Instruction of Amenemope” which is extremely similar to Prov. 22:17-24:22. The speaker in this Instruction is a royal official who is trying to teach his youngest son how to succeed in the same profession. In addition to sayings, such as “Better is bread when the heart is happy, than riches with sorrow,” Amenemope says that loving “the all-knowing One” who is a compassionate god, should motivate the wise to show compassion to fellow creatures. If nothing else, we should say Israel’s wisdom tradition belongs to a larger cultural phenomenon in the ancient Near East.
THE DARK SIDE
A Babylonian text called “Counsels of a Pessimist,” is reminiscent of Ecclesiastes. An Egyptian composition called “A Dispute over Suicide,” a Sumerian essay entitled “Man and his God,” and a text known as the “Babylonian Theodicy” are all similar to the book of Job, but each in disparate ways. The “Babylonian Theodicy” is written in the form a debate between a sufferer, who complains that the wicked prosper while his piety brings him no benefits, and a traditionalist, who insists on the truth of belief that good behavior is rewarded and bad behavior punished.
CRITICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND WISDOM LITERATURE
Early Jewish and Christian tradition accepted the antiquity of Proverbs, even those rabbis who doubted the appropriateness of including Proverbs and Ecclessiastes in the canon still assumed both works originated with Solomon. They thought Proverbs was written in Solomon’s younger years and Ecclesiastes when he was old and grey.
In the late 18th and early 19th cent., critical thinkers questioned Solomonic authorship of all of Proverbs, noting the “words of the wise” in 22:17 where “wise” was in plural form (“wise ones”). Further evidence for a composite of many authors or sources is found in the book itself: one section of Proverbs is attributed “the officials of King Hezekiah of Judah” (25:1), and the two final chapters are said to contain the words of “Agur, son of Jakeh” (30:1) (another great dog name…) and those of King Lemuel’s mother (31:1) (apparently a lovely and sagacious woman…).
Most scholars think that a variety of people had a hand in the compilation of Proverbs. They also estimate that the book took shape in several stages over an extended period of time. By the end of the 19th century even conservative scholars in large part doubted Solomon’s authorship of the wisdom books, and critical scholarship from the 20th century forward is almost unanimous on this point. The scholar that believes Solomon penned these books now may also believe in a flat earth.
THE DATE OF WISDOM TEXTS IN THE BIBLE
Many modern scholars date the composition of all of the wisdom texts to the post-exilic period (remember Cyrus the Great sent the exiled Jewish aristocracy home in 539 BCE. So after that…), based on the reasoning that wisdom’s lack of dependence on covenantal themes and consistent avoidance of reference to Israel’s history reflects the post-exilic Jewish community.
Proverbs: the consensus in scholarship from the end of the 19th cent. to the present has been to date Proverbs to the early post-exilic period, while acknowledging that various sayings of the book may be much older. So Proverbs may include really old pithy sayings, but it was compiled after the exile. Since Job and Ecclesiastes object to the viewpoint of Proverbs, most critical readers date these books even later.
Job: no known historical event is mentioned in Job, and modern opinions lead toward a post-exilic dating for the final form of the book, based on appropriateness of its subject matter to the concerns of post-exilic people, on similarities between Isaiah 40-55 and the poetic dialogues in Job, and on linguistic evidence. Whatever the case may be, the core story of Job’s theodicy is framed by a very late text, because we have Satan, the prosecuting attorney of Yahweh’s court.
HOW TO CHARACTERIZE WISDOM IN THE BIBLE
Early 20th century theologians labeled biblical wisdom literature as a “secular” genre because it had so little to say about worship or cult practices of Yahweh and because it lacked recognition of God’s acts in Israel’s history and covenant with them.
Von Rad argued that wisdom literature and Psalms should be seen as part of Israel’s response of obedience to God’s actions on their behalf. Claus Westermann argued that the Old Testament had two foci: “blessing” and “salvation history”, and that wisdom fell under the category of blessing and was important to OT theology. Seems like a cop out though.
Similarities between ancient Near Eastern wisdom literature and Israel’s wisdom books increased the theologian’s inclination to dismiss the wisdom books as unreliable witnesses to Israel’s ‘authentic’ theology and faith.
WHERE DID WISDOM COME FROM?
Gandalf the Grey. Just kidding. Association of wisdom literature in the ancient Near East with scribal activity is suggested by the “Words of Ahiqar,” a text discovered among the literary cache of the 6th century Jewish community living at Elephantine (an island on the Nile). In the document, Ahiqar is a scribe, a “wise scribe” in the royal Assyrian courts—the work contains c. 100 wise sayings, proverbs, fables, and riddles. Egyptian texts such as “In Praise of Learned Scribes” and “The Satire on the Trade” indicate that scribes in Egypt were connected with wisdom and royal bureaucracies.
There is a continued scholarly debate whether wisdom in Israel originated from a professional class of scribes and advisors to the king, or from traditions of common people, handed down in families and clans. Bible scholars who argue that Israel’s wisdom literature originated with a professional class of wise men and women who worked in the royal courts assume that Solomon brought foreign forms of bureaucracy in the form of wise men and women at court.
Jeremiah 18:18 lists the “wise” as a group alongside the priests and prophets. 2 Samuel 14 and 20 refer to two wise women who play an important role in national politics and both use proverbs as part of bargaining procedures.
Other scholars suggest that the “wise” were not a professional class in Israel but people across occupational and class lines who were recognized by their community as wise. They argue that the format of Proverbs 1-9 of address to “my son” suggest that wisdom was taught in a family setting and not in schools. This is debunked, in my opinion, by the fact that we have other texts where a youth is seeking to learn wisdom for service in the royal court.
CURRENT TRENDS IN WISDOM STUDIES
Dominant current opinion is that “no single sociological group was responsible for the sapiential corpus, whether family or royal court.” Instead it is commonly agreed that social groups responsible for wisdom writing span a large period of time and class settings. Wisdom literature is more often looked at in its final form instead of investigating its development or origins.
The Bible begins and ends with a tree of life. While the archetypal first man and first man have the image of the gods, and the knowledge of the gods, we lack their immortality because we never get to eat from the tree of life. In Revelation 22 the author plays with this image- the tree of life is at the center of the divine city and its leaves are for the healing of the nations. There is one other way to get to the tree of life in the scriptures. And that is to find and follow Lady Wisdom...who yells her knowledge in the streets for all who will listen and learn.