Early Israelite Wisdom

That belief has played an important part not only in the interpretation of the texts, but in reconstructions of Israelite society and history. In this book, Dr Weeks challenges this view, arguing that it is largely founded on assumptions which are now widely discredited, and he sets out to re-evaluate the evidence in the light of more recent research.

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.

The Wisdom of Solomon 10 is a unique passage among Jewish sapiential texts since it both presents Lady Wisdom as God's acting agent in early Israelite history and explicitly categorizes key biblical figures as either righteous or unrighteous. Structurally, Wisdom 10 is a pivotal text that binds the two halves of the book together through its vocabulary and themes. Although chapter 10 is such a unique passage that is central to the work, no full-scale study of this chapter has been attempted. Recent scholarship on the Wisdom of Solomon has focused on the identification of genres in the book’s subsections and the author’s reinterpretation of Scripture. Through the use of historical and literary criticism, this study especially focuses on the genre and hermeneutical method of Wisdom 10 in comparison to other passages in the book and similar types of literature inside and outside the Bible. Chapter One establishes the purpose and methodology of the study, Chapter Two sets the literary and historical contexts for the Wisdom of Solomon, and Chapters Three to Six analyze the text poetically, form-critically, exegetically, and hermeneutically. This study concludes that Pseudo-Solomon, the book’s author, composed and used Wisdom 10 in order to bind the two halves of the book together. Its genre is that of a Beispielreihe, or example list, and its form is an alternation of positive and negative examples that are linked by the repetition of a keyword. The passage also reflects elements of aretalogy, synkrisis, and midrash. Because of the first two of these elements, chapter 10 may be seen as supplementing the encomiastic genre in chapters 6–9. Furthermore, the aretalogical flavor of the text depicts Lady Wisdom in ways similar to the popular Hellenistic Egyptian goddess Isis in order to show Wisdom’s superiority to the pagan deity. Lastly, chapter 10 exhibits six primary hermeneutical principles used by the author throughout the book, albeit with differing degrees of focus. Since the Wisdom of Solomon is a late composition, this study illuminates one facet of the Jewish Hellenistic reinterpretation of Scripture and will elucidate similar modes of exegesis in the early rabbinical and early Christian eras.

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A completely new, expanded edition of this classic college text book about two key kinds of writing in the Old Testament: wisdom and law. Completely revised and updated, the book also includes much more on literary interpretation.

Ancient Israelite and Early Jewish Literature offers more than simply an introduction to the Hebrew Bible. Increased interest in Early Judaism as successor to the religion of Ancient Israel and background to the New Testament demands an introduction that guides the reader through the maze of Jewish literature dating from the Hellenistic and Early Roman periods in addition to the Hebrew Bible.

Moving away from focusing on wisdom as a literary genre, this book delves into the lived, embodied and formative dimensions of wisdom as they are delineated in Jewish sources from the Persian, Hellenistic and early Roman eras. Considering a diverse body of texts beyond later canonical boundaries, the book demonstrates that wisdom features not as an abstract quality, but as something to be performed and exercised at both the individual and community level. The analysis specifically concentrates on notions of a 'wise' person, including the rise of the sage as an exemplary figure. It also looks at how ancestral figures and contemporary teachers are imagined to manifest and practice wisdom, and considers communal portraits of a wise and virtuous life. In so doing, the author demonstrates that the previous focus on wisdom as a category of literature has overshadowed significant questions related to wisdom, behaviour and social life. Jewish wisdom is also contextualized in relation to its wider ancient Mediterranean milieu, making the book valuable for biblical scholars, classicists, scholars of religion and the ancient Near East and theologians.

Wisdom is an integratal part of all philosophical and religious traditions in the world. Focusing on the concept of wisdom, this book examines the difficulties and problems facing comparative studies of the early Confucian and Israelite traditions by exploring the cosmological and ethical implications of wisdom in the older layers of Christian and Confucian texts. Presenting a detailed discussion of how wisdom was understood in philosophical, religious and social contexts by the writers of the so-called early Confucian and Israelite wisdom texts, this book offers an invaluable contribution to our understanding of the significance of wisdom in the East and West, and to our knowledge of different and yet related ways of life as understood in their literature.