[Pre-publication version: Kynes, Will. “The ‘Wisdom Literature’ Category: An Obituary.”
Journal of Theological Studies 69 (2018): 1–24.]
The ‘Wisdom Literature’ Category
An Obituary
Will Kynes
Whitworth University
Abstract
The consensus that Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job are the primary members of a ‘Wisdom’ collection is nearly universal, though the category’s origin is unknown and its definition debated. This article identifies that origin and argues that it has caused that continuing debate.
Wisdom was not born in early Jewish and Christian interpretation, as some suggest, but in nineteenth-century Germany to make the Old Testament palatable to its ‘cultured despisers’.
The uncritical acceptance of the category perpetuates the presuppositions that inspired it, which continue to plague its interpretation. Now, as the category’s vital weaknesses are increasingly recognized, the time has come to declare Wisdom Literature dead and replace it with a new approach to genre that reads texts, not in exclusive categories, but in multiple overlapping groupings. This will offer a more nuanced understanding of the so-called
Wisdom texts’ place in the intricate intertextual network of the canon and beyond. It will free
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job, as well as the Israelite concept of wisdom to be interpreted more independently, beyond their connections with one another, and thus more fully and accurately.
1 The ‘Wisdom Literature’ category, a collection of biblical books centred on Proverbs,
Ecclesiastes and Job, has died.1 After 167 years, it has succumbed to the obsolescence which constantly threatens generic classifications.2 The category’s recent rocketing rise in popularity coupled with the nearly universal agreement on its value for biblical interpretation makes its death more shocking, however, since they had given the impression that Wisdom was in excellent health.
Wisdom’s Ancestry
Wisdom’s relatively young age at death was also surprising, since its pervasive presence in biblical studies made it difficult to imagine a time when it was not around. Many assumed that Wisdom was much older. Perhaps they were influenced by the existence of ancient Near
Eastern ‘Wisdom Literature’, forgetting to distinguish between the date texts currently associated with a category were composed and the origin of the category itself. Though texts that resembled Proverbs, such as the Egyptian Instruction of Ptahhotep or the Mesopotamian
Instructions of Shuruppak, and others that resembled Ecclesiastes or Job, such as the
Egyptian Dialogue between a Man and His Ba or the Mesopotamian Ludlul bēl nēmeqi, predated even those biblical texts, grouping them together as ‘Wisdom’ resulted from the scholarly consensus on the biblical Wisdom corpus,3 so it would be illegitimate to look there
1 Following an increasingly widespread convention (see below), to communicate its status as a scholarly construct, I refer to ‘Wisdom Literature’ in quotation marks. However, for ease of reading, I will henceforth dispense with them. I will also refer to the category by the shorter title, Wisdom, using capitalization to distinguish the literary category from wisdom as a concept. My focus here is primarily on Wisdom as a category of biblical books. According to the nominalist approach to genre I will develop below, literary categories, such as Wisdom Literature, should be treated as genres, since they name a corpus of texts grouped according to some perceived affinity between them, but genres should not be treated as exclusive categories for texts. 2 Alastair Fowler, Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), pp. 164–67. 3 This point has been made by those studying both Egyptian and Mesopotamian texts. See W. G. Lambert, Babylonian Wisdom Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960), p. 1; Ronald
2 for its origin.
Even so, it was commonly assumed that ‘vestiges’ of the category were already evident in early Jewish and Christian interpretation.4 The closest approximation of a Wisdom category in antiquity is the collection associated with Solomon (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and
Song of Songs), which is indeed clearly represented in both Jewish and Christian traditions.
The rabbis connect the three Solomonic books to phases of the king’s life (Canticles Rabbah
1:1), while Christian interpreters attempt in various ways to make theological sense of the collection, either associating the message of each book with a separate person of the Trinity
(Hippolytus of Rome, In. Cant. 1.3–5), a stage in the progression of philosophical reflection
(Origen, Comm. Cant. prologue), or different aspects of earthly life to be renounced in favour of spiritual contemplation (John Cassian, ‘Third Conference: On Renunciations’, IV.4).5
These attempts to explain the progression between the books in the Solomonic corpus, however, are clearly efforts to make sense of its diverse contents.6 This suggests the
Solomonic attribution inspired the grouping of the texts and not that the references to
Solomon might have served to ‘classify the material within its genre’.7 Also, in this collection
J. Williams, ‘The Sages of Ancient Egypt in the Light of Recent Scholarship’, JAOS 101 (1981), p. 1; Miriam Lichtheim, ‘Didactic Literature’, in Antonio Loprieno (ed.), Ancient Egyptian Literature: History and Forms (Probleme der Ägyptologie 10; Leiden: Brill, 1996), p. 261; Paul-Alain Beaulieu, ‘The Social and Intellectual Setting of Babylonian Wisdom Literatur’, in Richard J. Clifford (ed.), Wisdom Literature in Mesopotamia and Israel (Atlanta, GA: SBL, 2007), p. 3. 4 Katharine J. Dell, ‘Studies of the Didactical Books of the Hebrew Bible / Old Testament’, in Magne Sæbø (ed.), Hebrew Bible, Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation, vol. 3.1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013), pp. 605–6, n. 2. 5 See Marek Starowieyski, ‘Le Livre de l’Ecclésiaste dans l’antiquité chrétienne,’ in Stuart George Hall (ed.), Gregory of Nyssa: Homilies on Ecclesiastes: An English Version with Supporting Studies: Proceedings of the Seventh International Colloquium on Gregory of Nyssa (St Andrews, 5–10 September 1990) (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1993), pp. 406–8. 6 Timothy J. Stone, The Compilational History of the Megilloth: Canon, Contoured Intertextuality and Meaning in the Writings (FAT II 59; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), pp. 186–87. 7 Brevard S. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979), pp. 551, 579. Similarly, David G. Meade, Pseudonymity and Canon: An Investigation into the Relationship of Authorship and Authority in Jewish and Earliest
3 Job is excluded and the Song of Songs is included. To exchange this corpus for the modern one, the primary basis for the old category, Solomonic attribution, had to be discarded, and new historical, comparative, and form-critical criteria had to be developed.8 These changes suggest the ancient category is different from the modern one both quantitatively, in regard to its content, and qualitatively, in terms of its defining essence.
The same could be said for the other ‘vestiges’ of the category to which scholars sometimes appeal. Markus Witte, for example, argues the arrangement of the individual books in the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint, and corresponding early descriptions of the canon, such as Josephus’s, all reflect a classification of the texts into historical, prophetic and sapiential, or didactic, categories.9 However, though Josephus does mention four unnamed books that ‘contain hymns to God and instructions for people on life’ (AgAp. 1.8) in the
Hebrew canon, he is most likely referring to the Psalms and the three Solomonic books, leaving Job to be included among the prophets.10
Similarly, the arrangement of the books in the Hebrew Bible provides little evidence of a potential ancient Wisdom category. The third, Writings section, in which all of the so- called Wisdom books are found, appears to be a miscellany, as its name suggests, composed of books that are unified only in their idiosyncrasy: their defining feature being their lack of fit among either the Law or the Prophets. The traditional Jewish subgroupings Sifrei Emet and Megilloth within that section separate Wisdom’s content, with Proverbs and Job in the former and Ecclesiastes in the latter. On the other hand, modern efforts to identify a Wisdom
Christian Tradition (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987), pp. 44–72. 8 Gerald T. Sheppard, ‘Biblical Wisdom Literature and the End of the Modern Age’, in A. Lemaire and M. Sæbø (eds.), Congress Volume: Oslo 1998 (VTSup 80; Leiden: Brill, 2000), p. 372. 9 Markus Witte, ‘“Weisheit” in der alttestamentlichen Wissenschaft: Ausgewählte literatur- und theologiegeschichtliche Fragestellungen und Entwicklungen’, TLZ 137 (2012), p. 1160. 10 Sid Z. Leiman, ‘Josephus and the Canon of the Bible’, in Louis H. Feldman and Gohei Hata (eds.), Josephus, the Bible, and History (Leiden: Brill, 1989), pp. 53–54; John M.G. Barclay, Against Apion (Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary 10; Leiden: Brill, 2007), p. 30, nn. 165, 166.
4 grouping within the Writings, either in the order found in Baba Batra 14b11 or as one of several exemplary genre groupings in an anthology that follows Greek precedents,12 reflect the modern understanding of Wisdom too well. Without explicit ancient evidence, they must circularly rely on the very thesis they are setting out to prove, which preserves the possibility that they have anachronistically projected the modern category onto the ancient list.13
The Greek canon lists do appear to recognize genre distinctions, but they include both
Job and Psalms with Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs (and often Ben Sira and
Wisdom of Solomon). The few general references to this category from the early church reflect the criterion that would justify such a broad collection, classifying these texts merely as ‘the books written in verse’.14 Though this collection would eventually be known as libri didactici in the Latin tradition, given its content and that criterion, it does not equate with
‘Wisdom Literature’, as some would suggest.15 The texts in this section are too diverse, with didacticism only characteristic of some of them.16
11 Julius Steinberg, Die Ketuvim: Ihr Aufbau und ihre Botschaft (BBB 152; Hamburg: Philo, 2006), pp. 444–54. 12 Bernhard Lang, ‘The “Writings”: A Hellenistic Literary Canon in the Hebrew Bible’, in A. van der Kooij and K. van der Toorn (eds.), Canonization and Decanonization (SHR Leiden: Brill, 1998), pp. 41–65. See, similarly, Albert de Pury, ‘Zwischen Sophokles und Ijob: Die Schriften (Ketubim): Ein jüdischer Literature-Kanon’, Welt und Umwelt der Bibel 28 (2003), pp. 25–27. 13 Steinberg’s schema is not reflected in the MT, the other major witness to the order of the canonical books, and it relates only superficially to the content of the books, leaving it ‘too general to be meaningful’ (Stone, Compilational History of the Megilloth, p. 185). Lang, however, simply assumes the early existence of a Wisdom category consisting of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job, even as he implicitly acknowledges a ‘sapiential’ Solomonic corpus of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs would have been more likely at the time (Lang, ‘The “Writings”’, pp. 51, 54). 14 Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. 4.35; trans. Leo P. McCauley and Anthony A. Stephenson, St. Cyril of Jerusalem: Works (FC 61; Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1968), pp. 136–37. See also the late-fourth-century ‘Poem to Seleucus’ (lines 271–75) (Eberhard Oberg, Amphilochii Iconiensis: Iambi ad Seleucum [Berlin: de Gruyter, 1969], p. 37) and John of Damascus, De fide orthodoxa 4.17. 15 E.g., Niels Peter Lemche, The Old Testament Between Theology and History: A Critical Survey (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2008), p. 6. 16 John Barton, Oracles of God: Perceptions of Ancient Prophecy in Israel after the Exile (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 25.
5 The title ‘Wisdom’ applied to certain books might also appear to reflect a ‘specialized meaning’ for the term that reflects ‘an early recognition that certain Old Testament books are especially concerned to teach something called “wisdom.”’17 The books to which this title is applied, Ben Sira18 and Wisdom of Solomon, however, push the boundaries of the Wisdom category as it is currently conceived by, for example, incorporating the history of Israel (Ben
Sira 44–49; Wisdom 11–19) or merging Wisdom with Torah (e.g., Sir. 19:20; 24:1–34) or apocalyptic (e.g., Wisdom 5). If these titles indicate the ‘specialized meaning’ of wisdom, then the definition of Wisdom applied to books in the Hebrew Bible poorly approximates it.
Accordingly, none of those texts receives a similar title.19
Even Jer. 18:18, commonly considered biblical testimony for a Wisdom category in
of ( הצע ) ’ancient Israel, falls short of proving its existence. Though it mentions ‘the counsel
of ( רבד ) ’and ‘the word ( הכ ן ) ’of ‘the priest ( הרות ) ’alongside ‘the instruction ( םכח ) ’the wise‘
the most this text would provide is evidence for a specialized meaning ,( איבנ ) ’the prophet‘ for ‘the wise’ as a class in Israel, not for a group of texts. However, the parallel construction
replace ‘the wise’ as the third group in addition to ( נקז םי ) ’in Ezek. 7:26, where ‘the elders prophets and priests, suggests that ‘the wise’ in Jer. 18:18 characterizes anyone who has attained wisdom, as could be assumed of the elders, and is not a specialized term for a
17 R. N. Whybray, ‘Prophecy and Wisdom’, in R. Coggins, A. Phillips and Knibb M. (eds.), Israel’s Prophetic Heritage: Essays in Honour of Peter R. Ackroyd (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 181–82. 18 See Sir 51:30: ‘Wisdom of Yeshua son of Eleazar son of Sira’. Though this may be a later addition, it could still testify to an early connection between the book and Wisdom. See Patrick W. Skehan and Alexander A. Di Lella, The Wisdom of Ben Sira (AB 39; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1987), pp. 3, 579–80. Early interpreters, such as Athanasius (Easter Letter 39.20), used ‘Wisdom of Sirach’ as a title for the book. 19 Matthew Goff, ‘Qumran Wisdom Literature and the Problem of Genre’, DSD 17 (2010), pp. 332–33. Early Christian interpreters did occasionally refer to Proverbs, as well as the other books associated with the king, as Solomon’s ‘Wisdom’ (Edwin Cone Bissell, The Apocrypha of the Old Testament [New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1880], p. 231). Like the Solomonic collection discussed above, this does not necessarily indicate a genre designation, and certainly does not indicate a collection that equates with the modern Wisdom category.
6 specific class in Israel. This is how the word is generally used in the Hebrew Bible, often in contrast with the ‘fool’, which is certainly not intended to indicate a particular social group.20
and ( פסא ו ת ) ’with ‘collections ( רבד י מכח י ם ) ’The collocation of ‘the words of the wise
in Eccl. 12:11-12 suggests to some evidence of a Wisdom genre, however ( רפס י ם ) ’books‘ the contents of this purported genre are unclear. The following possibilities have been proposed: the Solomonic books, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes in close association with
Deuteronomy, or even ‘the words of the wise whatever they may be.’21 Choon-Leong Seow denies that ‘the words of the wise’ has a technical meaning here and argues that the passage refers to wisdom teachings generally rather than to a specific corpus.22 Either way, significantly, the passage provides little evidence for Job’s inclusion.
None of the ancient literary collections often associated with the modern Wisdom category contain the same group of texts, which reflects the differing criteria used to form them. The combination of quantitative and qualitative differences between the contents and definitions of these early collections and the modern Wisdom category indicate that it was not an ancient tradition. In fact, the category’s origins were hitherto uncertain. It emerged beyond the borders of current knowledge, in a ‘grey area’ of biblical scholarship.23 Wisdom was an ‘orphan’, then, both because it appeared to resemble foreign forebears from the
20 David McLain Carr, The Formation of the Hebrew Bible: A New Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 405; cf. R. N. Whybray, The Intellectual Tradition in the Old Testament (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1974), pp. 2–23. However, the ‘fools’ were suggested as a social group along with the ‘wise’ early on in the development of the Wisdom genre. See, e.g., Heinrich A. Ewald, ‘Über die Volks- und Geistesfreiheit Israel’s [sic] zur Zeit der großen Propheten bis zur ersten Zerstörung Jerusalems’, Jahrbücher der biblischen Wissenschaft 1 (1848), p. 100. 21 See, respectively, Gerald T. Sheppard, Wisdom as a Hermeneutical Construct: A Study in the Sapientializing of Old Testament Traditions (BZAW 151; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1980), pp. 127–29; G. H. Wilson, ‘“The Words of the Wise”: The Intent and Significance of Qohelet 12:9-14’, Journal of Biblical Literature 103 (1984), pp. 175–92; Michael V. Fox, A Time to Tear Down and a Time to Build up: A Rereading of Ecclesiastes (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), p. 376. 22 C. L. Seow, Ecclesiastes (AB 18C; New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), p. 386. 23 Dell, ‘Studies of the Didactical Books’, pp. 605–6, n. 2.
7 ancient Near East more than its canonical kin,24 and because its parentage was unknown.
Wisdom’s Birth
A few scholars have attempted to identify the category’s origins is biblical scholarship, suggesting dates such as 190825 or as early as 1891.26 However, references to the category appear in both English and German scholarship throughout the latter half of nineteenth century.27 The footnotes in those references all lead back to one book published in 1851,
Weisheits-Lehre der Hebräer written by Johann Bruch.28
Bruch credits several works with influencing his view of Israelite Wisdom.29
However, none of these works demonstrate a clear conception of Wisdom as a separate
24 James L. Crenshaw, ‘Prolegomenon’, in James L. Crenshaw (ed.), Studies in Ancient Israelite Wisdom (LBS; New York: Ktav, 1976), p. 1. 25 Crenshaw, ‘Prolegomenon’, p. 3; referring to Johannes Meinhold, Die Weisheit Israels in Spruch, Sage und Dichtung (Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer, 1908). 26 R. N. Whybray, The Book of Proverbs: A Survey of Modern Study (Leiden: Brill, 1995), pp. 1–2; referring to S. R. Driver, An Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1891). 27 See, e.g., Hermann Schultz, Alttestamentliche Theologie: Die Offenbarungsreligion auf ihrer vorchristlichen Entwickelungsstufe, 2 vols. (Frankfurt: Heyder & Zimmer, 1869), vol. 2, p. 186; Gustav Friedrich Oehler, Theologie des Alten Testaments, 2 vols. (Tübingen: Heckenhauer, 1873), vol. 2, pp. 49, 276–79; Eduard Reuss, Die Geschichte der heiligen Schriften alten Testaments (Braunschweig: Schwetschke & Sohn, 1881), p. 487; Driver, An Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, pp. 369, 385. 28 Johann Friedrich Bruch, Weisheits-Lehre der Hebräer: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Philosophie (Strasbourg: Treuttel & Würtz, 1851). See the references in the note above. Though Driver does not mention Bruch’s work directly, he refers to two works in which Bruch’s work is the earliest work on Wisdom Literature mentioned: Franz Delitzsch, Salomonisches Spruchbuch (Leipzig: Dörfling & Franke, 1873), p. 38; T. K. Cheyne, Job and Solomon: Or, The Wisdom of the Old Testament (New York: T. Whittaker, 1887), p. 178. 29 Bruch, Weisheits-Lehre, pp. 4–5. He mentions, in particular, Johann Georg Dahler, Denk- und Sittensprüche Salomo’s: Nebst den Abweichungen der Alexandrinischen Uebersetzung ins Teutsche übersetzt (Strasbourg: Amand König, 1810); W. M. L. de Wette, Lehrbuch der hebräisch-jüdischen Archäologie nebst einem Grundrisse der herbräische-jüdischen Geschichte (2nd edn.; Leipzig: Vogel, 1830); Friedrich Umbreit, Commentar über die Sprüche Salomo’s (Heidelberg: Mohr, 1826); and Heinrich A. Ewald, Geschichte des Volkes Israel bis Christus, 5 vols. (Göttingen: Dietrich, 1843–55); id., ‘Über die Volks- und Geistesfreiheit Israel’s [sic]’. He also shows an awareness of Wilhelm Vatke, Die biblische
8 category of biblical books consisting of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job, and, in the apocrypha, Ben Sira and Wisdom of Solomon, as Bruch, and the vast majority of those who mention the category after him do. After Bruch, these texts would also consistently be connected to a separate movement in Israel, though its character and professional status would continue to be debated.30 Bruch appears, therefore, to be the father of Wisdom
Literature. Though Bruch is the earliest to present the Wisdom category systematically and comprehensively, he does so by drawing heavily on a group of earlier scholars. Those earlier scholars are themselves each strongly influenced by prominent philosophical ideas of the early nineteenth century.31 They draw on philosophers such as Kant, Fries, Herder,
Schleiermacher, Feuerbach, and Hegel, many of whom they reference explicitly.32 If biblical scholarship, in the form of Johann Bruch, was Wisdom’s father, then post-Enlightenment continental philosophy was her mother.
Bruch’s work makes this lineage clear. Weisheits-Lehre der Hebräer, with its subtitle,
Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Philosophie, is a fitting sequel for his previous book, Études philosophiques sur le christianisme, which had been translated, with his help, into German a few years earlier.33 Explicitly addressing an audience of both theologians and philosophers
(xiv), Weisheits-Lehre der Hebräer begins by defending the study of the Old Testament to
Theologie wissenschaftlich dargestellt (Berlin: Bethge, 1835); see Bruch, Weisheits-Lehre, pp. 178–79 note. 30 See below. 31 See J. W. Rogerson, Old Testament Criticism in the Nineteenth Century: England and Germany (London: SPCK, 1984), pp. 36–44, 70–71, 136–37; Hans-Joachim Kraus, Geschicte der historisch-kritischen Erforschung des Alten Testaments (3rd edn.; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1982), pp. 174–208. 32 E.g., Umbreit, Sprüche Salomo’s, p. vii; Ewald, ‘Über die Volks- und Geistesfreiheit Israel’s [sic]’, p. 102; Vatke, Die biblische Theologie wissenschaftlich dargestellt, pp. 1– 174. 33 Johann Friedrich Bruch, Études philosophiques sur le christianisme (Paris: Pitois-Levrault, 1839); translated as Philosophische Studien über das Christenthum, trans. Thomas Frantz (Mannheim: Hoff, 1847).
9 the latter group of readers, justifying the Hebrews’ inclusion in the history of philosophy. He writes,
Es schien mir, als ob schon der in mehreren Schriften des Alten Testaments
wehende untheokratische Geist darauf aufmerksam hätte Machen sollen, daß
es auch unter den Hebräern nicht an Männern fehlte, deren Geist in den
religiösen Instituten ihrer Nation keine Befriedigung fand, und die daher auf
anderin Wege, dem Wege nämlich des freien Denkens, sich Auffschluß über
die sie bewegenden Fragen und Ruhe des Gemüthes zu verschaffen suchten.
(ix–x)
The untheocratic and free-thinking spirit Bruch attributes to the wise combines many of the philosophical ideas that the biblical scholars who influenced Bruch had themselves imbibed as they served as a collective womb for Wisdom’s gestation. It also bears a remarkable similarity to the principles of Alsatian liberalism at the time, of which Bruch was a prominent proponent.34
The circumstances of Wisdom Literature’s birth, then, explain a great deal about the life of this controversial category. In themselves they do not doom it, but the convenient appearance of Wisdom Literature to meet the demands of the time requires more careful scrutiny than it has previously received. In nineteenth-century Germany, Christians continued what Kant had identified as their long struggle to present Christianity as ‘a purely moral religion’ while also in continuity with the Jewish faith, which he claimed was characterized by dogmatic faith, theocratic institutions, legal coercion, and particularistic exclusion.35
Kant’s solution was to argue that Judaism prepared the way for Christianity to arise only after
34 See Anthony J. Steinhoff, The Gods of the City: Protestantism and Religious Culture in Strasbourg, 1870–1914 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), pp. 51–52. 35 Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, trans. Theodore M. Greene and Hoyt H. Hudson (2nd edn.; New York: Harper & Row, 1960), pp. 116–118; trans. of Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft (Königsberg: Friedrich Nicolovius, 1793).
10 its patriarchal, political, and priestly character was diminished, allowing ‘this otherwise ignorant people…to receive much foreign (Greek) wisdom’, which had the effect of
‘enlightening Judaism with concepts of virtue’. The solution Bruch proposed was to present
Wisdom as, in Delitzsch’s succinct formulation at the time, ‘eine Geistesrichtung universalistischer, humanistischer, philosophischer Art,’ within the Old Testament, independent of Israel’s particularistic theocracy, cult, and law.36 Delitzsch adopted the category from Bruch, whom he acknowledged ‘zuerst auf die Chokma oder den Humanismus als eine eigentümliche Geistesrichtung in Israel aufmerksam gemacht zu haben’.37 However,
Delitzsch had concerns with Bruch’s placement of Wisdom ‘in ein indifferentistisches und sogar feindliches Verhältnis zum Nationalgesetz und zum Nationalcultus setzt, welches er dem Verhältnis christlicher Philosophen zur orthodoxen Theologie vergleicht.’ Others shared this concern with the opposition Bruch had introduced between the revealed popular religion and the free-thinking, philosophically minded ‘wise men’ who sought to transcend it in their writings.38 Yet even these scholars accepted his basic premise of a separate class and distinct corpus of texts, not recognizing how closely Bruch’s modern philosophical characterization of Wisdom was intertwined with the category’s very existence.39
Wisdom’s Growth and Development
The interpretation of Wisdom in the last century and a half has demonstrated how the category and its philosophical origins are not easily separated. Despite its later success, the
36 Franz Delitzsch, Das Buch Iob (Leipzig, Dörffling und Franke, 1864), vol. 1, p. 5. 37 Delitzsch, Salomonisches Spruchbuch, p. 38. 38 See Schultz, Alttestamentliche Theologie, vol. 2, pp. 186–87; Oehler, Theologie des Alten Testaments, vol. 2, pp. 49, 277–78. 39 For more on the nineteenth-century origin of the Wisdom category, see Will Kynes, ‘The Nineteenth-Century Beginnings of “Wisdom Literature,” and Its Twenty-first-Century End?’, in John Jarick (ed.), Perspectives on Israelite Wisdom: Proceedings of the Oxford Old Testament Seminar (LHBOTS 618; London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016), pp. 83– 108.
11 category was never able to escape the effects of its troubled upbringing and became ‘a rather errant child’ in the Hebrew Bible.40 As its popularity grew, so did its struggles with identity.41
Bruch had brought this group of texts together on the basis of their purported philosophical interests and independence from the rest of the canon and Israelite religion. Naturally, these themes continually reemerged as scholarly reflection on Israelite Wisdom developed.
In the category’s early years, though, Wisdom’s impact was minimal enough that, as mentioned earlier, its origin is frequently only recognized a half century into its existence. In
1924, however, Wisdom came to prominence when close parallels between Prov 22:17–24:22 and the Egyptian Instruction of Amenemope were discovered.42 Since then, the debates between Bruch and his early opponents have been writ large in biblical scholarship. In the flood of research that followed this discovery over the next decade, further ancient Near
Eastern parallels were explored, contributing to universalistic conceptions of Wisdom thought flowing out of a common social setting of educated scribes.43 After the Second
World War, though, these ancient Near Eastern connections were employed to discredit
Wisdom as ‘pagan’ and a ‘foreign body’ in the Old Testament.44 Those attributes that had set
40 R. E. Clements, ‘Wisdom and Old Testament Theology’, in John Day, Robert P. Gordon and H. G. M Williamson (eds.), Wisdom in Ancient Israel: Essays in Honour of J. A. Emerton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 271. 41 See Ludger Schwienhorst-Schönberger, ‘Alttestamentliche Weisheit im Diskurs’, ZAW 125 (2013), pp. 118–42. 42 A. Erman, ‘Das Weisheitsbuch des Amen-em-ope’, Orientalistische Literaturzeitung 27 (1924), pp. 241–52; id., ‘Eine ägyptische Quelle der “Sprüche Salomos”’, Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften XV (1924), pp. 86–92. 43 See Crenshaw, ‘Prolegomenon’, p. 6; Rudolf Smend, ‘The Interpretation of Wisdom in Nineteenth-Century Scholarship’, in John Day, Robert P. Gordon and H. G. M. Williamson (eds.), Wisdom in Ancient Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 264. For further bibliography from this period, see Walter Baumgartner, ‘Die israelitische Weisheitsliteratur’, Theologische Rundschau 5 (1933), pp. 259–61; R. B. Y. Scott, ‘The Study of Wisdom Literature’, Interpretation 24 (1970), p. 23, n. 3. 44 G. Ernest Wright, God Who Acts: Biblical Theology as Recital (London: SCM Press, 1952), p. 104; Horst Dietrich Preuss, ‘Erwägungen zum theologischen Ort alttestamentlicher Weisheitsliteratur’, Evangelische Theologie 30 (1970), pp. 393–417; Hartmut Gese, Lehre und Wirklichkeit in der alten Weisheit (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1958), p. 2.
12 her apart now kept her from having a part in a unified Old Testament theology, which was at the time oriented around the theological significance of Israelite history. Over the course of the 1960s, however, Israelite history lost its stronghold in biblical scholarship, and Wisdom was marginalized no more. From the primeval history (Gen 1–11) to Esther, from law to history and prophecy, few texts escaped Wisdom’s ‘influence’.45 This ‘special orphan’, as
Crenshaw puts it, became ‘queen for a day, perhaps even Queen Mother’.46
Crenshaw was concerned about the rapid and extensive spread of Wisdom’s influence across the canon, but his attempts to stop her by restricting the definition of Wisdom
Literature to the traditional Wisdom corpus have ultimately failed.47 One can attempt simply to recount the variegated features of the diverse Wisdom corpus, as Crenshaw’s influential definition of Wisdom Literature as a marriage between accepted Wisdom forms and Wisdom content does.48 Or one can arbitrarily exclude some of those features, by, for example, declaring Wisdom ‘non-revelatory speech’ despite the crucial role revelation plays in Job.49
However, any definition broad enough to encompass the Wisdom texts in their entirety must be so vague and abstract that hardly a biblical text may be excluded. Does any biblical writing not intend to instruct? Is any not interested in guiding its reader toward wellbeing?
45 For relevant bibliography and discussion, see James L. Crenshaw, ‘Method in Determining Wisdom Influence upon “Historical” Literature’, JBL 88 (1969), pp. 129–42; id., ‘Prolegomenon’, pp. 9–13; Donn F. Morgan, Wisdom in the Old Testament Traditions (Atlanta: John Knox, 1981); Stuart Weeks, An Introduction to the Study of Wisdom Literature (New York: T&T Clark, 2010), p. 135. 46 Crenshaw, ‘Prolegomenon’, p. 1. 47 See Crenshaw, ‘Method in Determining Wisdom Influence’, p. 132. 48 James L. Crenshaw, Old Testament Wisdom: An Introduction (3rd edn.; Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2010), p. 12; orig. edn. 1981. Weeks calls Crenshaw’s definition ‘only really a way of encapsulating the problem of definition, rather than of solving it’ (Weeks, Wisdom Literature, pp. 142–43). 49 James L. Crenshaw, ‘Wisdom’, in J. Hayes (ed.), Old Testament Form Criticism (San Antonio, TX: Trinity University Press, 1974), p. 226.
13 Once again ‘wearing her party dress’,50 Wisdom defied definitional strictures. Interpreters were forced to choose between letting the category dance across the canon again or making a circular appeal to the ‘universal’ consensus on Wisdom’s contents. This recourse to scholarly consensus is further proof that Wisdom Literature is a modern scholarly tradition rather than an ancient one.51
Rather than allow Wisdom to be excluded from the rest of the Hebrew Bible and its theology, scholars had begun increasingly to invite it right into its ‘main stream’,52 its broad
‘background’,53 its ‘beginning’,54 its ‘heart’,55 and the ‘preservation, composition, utilization, and instruction’ of its entirety.56 Some were even actively advocating for Wisdom’s conquest of the entire canon, ‘look[ing] forward to a time when most of the Hebrew Bible, if not all of it, will be recognized as “wisdom literature.”’57
Wisdom had been born with two vocations, to shed new light on a collection of opaque biblical books and the ancient Israelite world from which they came and to carve out some part of the Hebrew Bible that would be palatable in a post-Enlightenment age. As it developed, however, these callings came into conflict. Wisdom became more distinctive from
50 Stuart Weeks, ‘The Place and Limits of Wisdom Revisited’, in John Jarick (ed.), Perspectives on Israelite Wisdom: Proceedings of the Oxford Old Testament Seminar (LHBOTS 618; London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016), p. 6. 51 See Will Kynes, ‘The Modern Scholarly Wisdom Tradition and the Threat of Pan- sapientialism: A Case Report’, in Mark Sneed (ed.), Was There a Wisdom Tradition?: New Prospects in Israelite Wisdom Studies (AIL 23; Atlanta: SBL, 2015), pp. 11–38. 52 Richard J. Clifford, ‘Introduction to the Wisdom Literature’, in Introduction to Wisdom Literature, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Book of Wisdom, Sirach (NIB 5; Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1997), p. 1. 53 Jesper Høgenhaven, Problems and Prospects of Old Testament Theology (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987), pp. 99–100. 54 David McLain Carr, The Formation of the Hebrew Bible: A New Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 407. 55 Katharine J. Dell, ‘Wisdom in Israel’, in A. D. H. Mayes (ed.), Text in Context: Essays by Members of the Society for Old Testament Study (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 370. 56 Sneed, Mark. ‘Is the “Wisdom Tradition” a Tradition?’ CBQ 73 (2011), pp. 62–64. 57 Yoram Hazony, The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 284–5, n. 26.
14 the rest of the Hebrew Bible, and then it began to shape the rest of the canon into its image as more and more texts and finally the basic Israelite worldview as a whole were associated with
Wisdom. Interpreters found ‘something attractive’ about Wisdom, even if they could not quite identify it.58 Thus, Crenshaw observes, since its identification as a separate category,
Wisdom ‘has stood largely as a mirror image of the scholar painting her portrait’.59 And, John
Collins adds, biblical interpreters have demonstrated a tendency to apply the ‘Wisdom’ label to ‘[a]ny form of knowledge that is recognized as good’,60 which often has a striking similarity to the knowledge those scholars themselves most value.
Starting with the ‘presumption’61 or ‘assumption’ of a ‘subjective nature’62 that a category primarily composed of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job exists, interpreters find it difficult to identify that ‘mysterious ingredient’ that holds it together.63 But perhaps that is not because the category is so foreign and obscure but because it is so familiar and clear. Views of what is ‘good’ have not changed that much since the category originated in the nineteenth century. It is little surprise that these vague, abstract features of Wisdom, such as ‘didactic emphasis’, ‘humanistic interest’, or ‘focus on creation’—knowledge that is recognized as good—may be found in so many other texts, both in the Hebrew Bible and in the ancient
Near East. With little concrete evidence, either literarily or historically, to hinder its spread, the Wisdom category has had the power increasingly to transform the Hebrew Bible and ancient Near Eastern texts into its reflective image.
58 Douglas Miller, ‘Wisdom in the Canon: Discerning the Early Intuition’, in Mark Sneed (ed.), Was There a Wisdom Tradition?: New Prospects in Israelite Wisdom Studies (AIL 23; Atlanta: SBL, 2015), p. 87. 59 Crenshaw, ‘Prolegomenon’, p. 3. 60 John J. Collins, ‘Response to George Nickelsburg’ (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, Chicago, IL, 1994), p. 2; cited in Sarah J. Tanzer, ‘Response to George Nickelsburg, “Wisdom and Apocalypticism in Early Judaism”’, in B. G. Wright and L. Wills (eds.), Conflicted Boundaries in Wisdom and Apocalypticism (SBLSymS 35; Atlanta: SBL, 2005), p. 42. 61 Alastair Hunter, Wisdom Literature (London: SCM, 2006), p. 7. 62 Crenshaw, ‘Prolegomenon’, p. 5. 63 Crenshaw, Old Testament Wisdom, p. 10.
15
Wisdom’s Death
Even as Wisdom was expanding in the 1960s, however, Gerhard von Rad recognized the category’s inherent weakness as a scholarly invention and therefore something that could disguise its contents despite potentially never having existed.64 Though von Rad went on to preserve the category, recently the ‘uncritical use of this collective term’ and its potential for
‘dangerously prejudicing the interpretation of varied material’, of which he warned, have caught up with Wisdom. Fundamental questions about the category have begun to be raised with a new urgency: Was there a ‘wisdom tradition’?65 What are the boundaries of
‘Wisdom’?66 Is the ‘Wisdom Literature’ category ‘useful’?67 The scare quotes in the titles of these articles demonstrate the waning scholarly confidence in the category as much as the recent attempts to come to its defence.68 As the questions mount, von Rad’s worry that the category may be ‘more of a hindrance than a help’ is being increasingly validated.69 The time, it appears, has come to declare Wisdom dead.
64 Gerhard von Rad, Wisdom in Israel, trans. James D. Martin (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1993), p. 7; trans. of Weisheit in Israel (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1970). 65 Sneed, ‘Is the “Wisdom Tradition” a Tradition?’ 66 Katharine J. Dell, ‘Deciding the Boundaries of “Wisdom”: Applying the Concept of Family Resemblance’, in Mark Sneed (ed.), Was There a Wisdom Tradition?: New Prospects in Israelite Wisdom Studies (AIL 23; Atlanta: SBL, 2015). 67 Stuart Weeks, ‘Is “Wisdom Literature” a Useful Category?’, in Hindy Najman, Jean- Sébastien Rey and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar (eds.), Tracing Sapiential Traditions in Ancient Judaism (JSJSup 174; Leiden: Brill, 2016). 68 E.g, Annette Schellenberg, ‘Don’t Throw the Baby Out with the Bathwater: On the Distinctness of the Sapiential Understanding of the World’, in Mark Sneed (ed.), Was There a Wisdom Tradition?: New Prospects in Israelite Wisdom Studies (AIL 23; Atlanta: SBL, 2015). 69 Von Rad, Wisdom in Israel, p. 8.
16 Wisdom’s Legacy
Despite its weaknesses, Wisdom will be survived by the benefits it has generated: an increased interest in the concept of wisdom in the Bible and across the ancient Near East, and a widespread appreciation for the value of the three so-called Wisdom books. Wisdom’s legacy, then, will depend on the place given these heirs by future biblical interpreters. Its life depended on closely uniting the one, the concept of wisdom and a growing throng of associated ideas, such as creation theology, universalism, empiricism, and individualism,70 with the other, a specific group of texts. The Wisdom category was dependent on the unity of the two, and they were dependent on each other. The category’s death frees the concept of wisdom and the so-called Wisdom texts to be understood more independently from one another. Without the category setting common boundaries for both, wisdom can be
המכח understood with resources beyond these texts (as it often is in the requisite definition of at the beginnings of introductions to Wisdom Literature), and the message of these texts can transcend wisdom. This will demonstrate the interdependence of the ‘Wisdom’ texts and other biblical texts across the canon and beyond. All are interwoven in a vast, intricate web of meaning.
After all, as John Frow observes, ‘All texts are relevantly similar to some texts and relevantly dissimilar to others’.71 Further, according to Karl Popper, ‘things may be similar in different respects, and any two things which are from one point of view similar may be dissimilar from another point of view’.72 Different approaches to genre handle both this tension between the general and the particular and the potential surplus of meaning these relationships create in different ways. Biblical studies, encouraged by form criticism’s linking
70 For these and other distinctive Wisdom traits, see, recently, Miller, ‘Wisdom in the Canon’ and Schellenberg, ‘Don’t Throw the Baby Out with the Bathwater’. 71 John Frow, Genre (2nd edn.; London: Routledge, 2015), p. 52; emphasis added. 72 Karl R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (New York: Basic Books, 1959), p. 421; emphasis original; cited in Paul Hernadi, Beyond Genre: New Directions in Literary Classification (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1972), p. 4.
17 of literary genre to historical setting, has long perpetuated a realist approach to genre, which carves this complex textual network into exclusive, non-overlapping genre classifications.
This traditional taxonomic approach over-emphasizes both the similarity with some texts and the difference with others, placing groups of texts in distorting echo chambers.
Recognizing the marginalizing effect this approach has had on Wisdom Literature, the recent pan-sapiential response has emphasized similarity to the detriment of difference and flattened out textual diversity. Acknowledging that Wisdom cannot be justified according to a taxonomic understanding of genre, scholars have proposed more pliant and permeable approaches that maintain a distinct biblical Wisdom category while giving it more ‘fuzzy boundaries’. These approaches include the general dismissal of ‘generic realism’ in favour of
‘generic nominalism’, and more specific approaches such as prototype, family resemblance, or speech-act theories.73 Though a step in the right direction, these approaches still cling to old taxonomic assumptions so the vague definitions they provide only contribute to the scholarly tendency to associate more and more texts with Wisdom.74
An individualistic approach, though, which attempts to dismiss genre groupings altogether and interpret each text independently, would make the opposite mistake, emphasizing difference over similarity. More than that, it attempts a practical impossibility, since textual comparison is both necessary and inevitable in interpretation. Responding to this view, David Fishelov argues that ‘no matter how fervently an author claims that his text is
73 See, respectively, Sneed, ‘Is the “Wisdom Tradition” a Tradition?’; Benjamin G. Wright, ‘Joining the Club: A Suggestion about Genre in Early Jewish Texts’, DSC 17 (2010), pp. 289–314; Dell, ‘Deciding the Boundaries’; Simon Chi-Chung Cheung, Wisdom Intoned: A Reappraisal of the Genre ‘Wisdom Psalms’ (LHBOTS 613; London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015). 74 Wright, for example, betrays his underlying taxonomic impulse by comparing genres to clubs with texts participating ‘fully’ in one genre club and potentially as an affiliate in others (‘Joining the Club’, p. 303). In Sneed’s nominalist approach, he argues that texts may be associated with numerous different genres, but still attributes not merely the Wisdom books, but ‘the other literary genres of our Hebrew Bible’ as well to ‘these same Israelite wisdom writers or scribal scholars’ (‘Is the “Wisdom Tradition” a Tradition?’, pp. 62–64).
18 unique, it still has intimate links with existing types of literature, i.e., with literary genres.’75
However, this is a false disjunction: a text’s unique character need not be set against its links with other types of literature, since every text will relate differently with other texts and involve a unique set of ‘intimate links with existing types of literature’. Therefore, I favour a definition of genre such as the one proposed by Eric Drott. Rather than taxonomic categories, he argues, genres should be understood as dynamic groupings, which ‘result from acts of assemblage…performed by specific agents in specific social and institutional settings.’76
Biblical scholars have begun to recognize the ways genres overlap in texts, but they have yet to integrate this insight with the contribution of historical and cultural perspectives like the nineteenth-century German context in which Wisdom was conceived.77 To conceptualize this, a metaphor may help, as they often do in genre theory.78 Genres can be envisioned as constellations of texts, ‘an imaginary way of representing real relationships’, that trace out ‘zones of reading’ in the sky.79 Friedrich Schlegel claims the traditional taxonomic approach, then, is ‘pre-Copernican’, since it assumes ‘whatever somebody is capable of producing, whatever happens to be in fashion, is the stationary earth at the center of all things.’80 Genres in this understanding are drawn on the two-dimensional firmament viewed from this single perspective. The stars, however, are actually spread across three dimensions of space, not two. This means that stars that appear relatively close together from
75 David Fishelov, Metaphors of Genre: The Role of Analogies in Genre Theory (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993), p. 82. 76 Eric Drott, ‘The End(s) of Genre’, Journal of Music Theory 57 (2013), pp. 9–10. 77 See Sean Burt, The Courtier and the Governor: Transformations of Genre in the Nehemiah Memoir (JAJSup 17; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014); Alan Bale, Genre and Narrative Coherence in the Acts of the Apostles (LNTS 514; London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015). 78 Fishelov, Metaphors of Genre, pp. 155–58. 79 Thomas O. Beebee, The Ideology of Genre: A Comparative Study of Generic Instability (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), p. 282; Roland Barthes, S/Z: An Essay, trans. Richard Miller (New York: Hill and Wang, 1974), p. 14. 80 Friedrich Schlegel, ‘Athenaeum Fragments’, in Friedrich Schlegel’s Lucinde and the Fragments, trans. Peter Firchow (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1971), p. 237; orig. ed. 1798.
19 an earthly vantage point may in fact be much farther apart. For example, the anthropomorphic relationship between the stars that forms the Orion constellation would disappear if those stars were viewed from elsewhere in the universe; then, new relationships between Orion’s stars and others in the sky would emerge.81
As the ancestry, birth, life, and death of Wisdom Literature demonstrate, ‘the way we constellate texts changes as a function of history through the perspective of individual critics’.82 Therefore, instead of being limited to the stationary view from a single, nineteenth- century perspective, in which a ‘universalistic, humanistic, philosophical’ conception of
Wisdom is ‘at the center of all things’, the relevant affinities revealed by other perspectives should also be considered. To maintain its hermeneutical value, the conception of Wisdom that united Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job for scholars such as Bruch should not be taken as the only, or even necessarily the main, topic with which the three books are concerned. I would propose, then, imagining the intertextual network surrounding those texts in three dimensions rather than two as in figure 1 below, where relationships between the texts are depicted in the shape of a pyramid. This would encourage the texts to be interpreted from varied ‘points of view’, each which considers different affinities ‘relevant’ as they inspire different textual groupings. This would appreciate how each text demonstrates its particularity by ‘participating’ in multiple genres without ‘belonging’ to any one of them.83
81 Daniel Brown, ‘The Orion Constellation as an Installation: An Innovative Three- Dimensional Teaching and Learning Environment’, The Physics Teacher 51 (2013), 160. 82 Beebee, Ideology of Genre, p. 283; cf. Stuart Weeks, ‘The Limits of Form Criticism in the Study of Literature, with Reflections on Psalm 34’, in Katharine J. Dell and Paul M. Joyce (eds.), Biblical Interpretation and Method: Essays in Honour of John Barton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 19. 83 Jacques Derrida, ‘The Law of Genre’, in David Duff (ed.), Modern Genre Theory (London: Longman, 2000), p. 230.
20 Intertextual network in three dimensions (fig. 1)
For example, before the Wisdom category was developed, de Wette, inspired by the philosophy of Jakob Friedrich Fries to seek out deeply felt religious experience in the
Hebrew Bible, combined the lament Psalms, Job, and Ecclesiastes to describe Hebrew religion as characterized by Unglück or ‘misfortune’.84 The Jewish Sifrei Emet grouping, however, unites Job and Psalms with Proverbs. Though the reasoning behind this grouping is unclear,85 it does focus attention on the way Job stands between Psalms and Proverbs, incorporating significant features from each,86 and the importance of the dichotomy of righteousness and wickedness in all three books.87 Other early groupings, such as the
Solomonic collection or the poetic division of the canon, provide more perspectives still, each
84 W. M. L. de Wette, ‘Beytrag zur Charakteristik des Hebraismus’, in Carl Daub and Friedrich Creuzer (eds.), Studien, vol. 3 (Heidelberg: Mohr & Zimmer, 1807). For a discussion of Fries, his philosophy, and his influence on de Wette, see Rogerson, Old Testament Criticism, pp. 36–44. 85 The books may simply be grouped together based on their larger relative size or the distinctive cantillation marks they share, which may distinguish their poetic style. However, Rabbinic reflection on the grouping describes the books’ differences rather than their affinities, associating Psalms with piety, Proverbs with wisdom, and Job with punishment (Ber. 57b). 86 See Curt Kuhl, ‘Neuere Literarkritik des Buches Hiob’, Theologische Rundschau 21 (1953), pp. 311–12; Ivan Engnell, ‘The Figurative Language of the Old Testament’, in John T. Willis (ed.), Critical Essays on the Old Testament (London: SPCK, 1970), p. 256. עשׁר Claus Westermann, for example, notes their disproportionate use of the word 87 (“wicked”) compared to the rest of the Hebrew Bible, which indicates “a relationship of these three complexes to one another” (Roots of Wisdom: The Oldest Proverbs of Israel and Other Peoples, trans. J. Daryl Charles [Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1995], p. 81).
21 which considers different similarities between the texts relevant, and such examples could be multiplied. By viewing the texts within these overlapping groupings, this ‘polycentric’ approach to genre would provide a fuller appreciation of their meaning by triangulating their location in relation to other texts more accurately ‘in the more-than-three-dimensional universe of verbal art.’88
Ecclesiastes, for example, appears in several of the textual constellations just mentioned, Wisdom, Misfortune, Solomonic, and Poetic, each which reveals different salient features of the text, whether that is the book’s interest in wisdom according to Bruch’s reading, the agonized search for meaning de Wette sees in it, the royal garb of its reflections,89 or its formal characteristics.90 These genre constellations do not exist without the recognition of the particular relationship Ecclesiastes has to separate patterns of different textual stars in the literary sky, but interpreting the book fully requires these four patterns of textual meaning to be blended together. The book’s meaning is more than any one genre grouping can comprehend, but that meaning cannot be comprehended without genre groupings.
Job, which was not closely associated with Proverbs and Ecclesiastes before Wisdom
Literature was developed in the nineteenth century, shares the category with them particularly uncomfortably. In pre-modern interpretation, the book is grouped in various ways with a wide range of texts, not merely the Sifrei Emet and Poetry, but also History, Torah, Prophecy,
88 Hernadi, Beyond Genre, p. 153. 89 E.g., Tremper Longman, Fictional Akkadian Autobiography: A Generic and Comparative Study (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1991), pp. 120–23; Y. V. Koh, Royal Autobiography in the Book of Qoheleth (BZAW 369; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2006). 90 E.g., Harold Fisch, Poetry with a Purpose: Biblical Poetics and Interpretation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), pp. 158–78; Oswald Loretz, ‘Poetry and Prose in the Book of Qoheleth (1:1–3:22; 7:23–8:1; 9:6–10; 12:8–14)’, in Johannes C. de Moor and Wilfred G. E. Watson (eds.), Verse in Ancient Near Eastern Prose (AOAT 42; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1993), pp. 155–89.
22 and dramatic and epic texts both in the canon and beyond.91 Modern interpretation has resurrected a number of those genre proposals as well as suggesting that the book’s author has adapted other genres, dramatizing lament92 or lawsuit,93 or transforming prophecy into
‘metaprophecy’.94 For some, the author’s manipulation of genre is considered so pervasive that it becomes a genre itself, a meta-genre, such as parody95 or polyphonic dialogue.96 The old, taxonomic approach to genre would require readers to choose one of these genres in which to classify the book. Some of the remaining genre proposals might then, at most, be maintained as subservient genres serving the purposes of that ‘predominant’ genre. However, debate continues over which genre that might be. Even Wisdom Literature is increasingly questioned.97 As a result, many opt to categorize the book as sui generis.98 If Job is sui generis, however, this is not due to the book’s isolation from other texts, but its connections with so many of them. As Crenshaw writes of Job, ‘Like all great literary works, this one
91 For the wide range of genre proposals made for the book throughout its interpretation history, see Françoise Mies, ‘Le genre littéraire du livre de Job’, Revue biblique 110 (2003), pp. 336–69; Markus Witte, ‘Die literarische Gattung des Buches Hiob: Robert Lowth und seine Erben’, in John Jarick (ed.), Sacred Conjectures: The Context and Legacy of Robert Lowth and Jean Astruc (LHBOTS 457; London: T&T Clark, 2007), pp. 93–123; C. L. Seow, Job 1–21: Interpretation and Commentary (Illuminations; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2013), pp. 47–65. 92 Claus Westermann, The Structure of the Book of Job: A Form-Critical Analysis, trans. Charles A. Muenchow (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981). 93 Sylvia Huberman Scholnick, ‘Lawsuit Drama in the Book of Job’ (Ph.D. diss., Brandeis University, 1975); cf. Heinz Richter, Studien zu Hiob: Der Aufbau des Hiobbuches, dargestellt an den Gattungen des Rechtslebens (Theologische Arbeiten 11; Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstat, 1959), pp. 131–32. 94 James Edward Harding, ‘The Book of Job as Metaprophecy’, Studies in Religion 39 (2010), pp. 523–47. 95 Katharine J. Dell, The Book of Job as Sceptical Literature (BZAW 197; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1991), pp. 109–57. 96 Carol A. Newsom, The Book of Job: A Contest of Moral Imaginations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). 97 E.g., Dell, Book of Job, pp. 63–88; David Wolfers, Deep Things out of Darkness: The Book of Job, Essays and a New Translation (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1995), pp. 47–51; Timothy Jay Johnson, Now My Eye Sees You: Unveiling an Apocalyptic Job (HBM 24; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2009), pp. 15–23; Harding, ‘The Book of Job as Metaprophecy’. 98 E.g., Marvin H. Pope, Job (AB 15; 3rd edn.; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1973), p. xxx; Engnell, ‘Figurative Language’, p. 256; Seow, Job 1–21, p. 61.
23 rewards readers who come to it from vastly different starting points.’99 To this end, mapping the dense intertextual network surrounding the book, to which these various genre proposals testify, incorporates the book’s defiance of genre into its interpretation rather than limiting the book’s meaning to a single genre or denying it any genre at all.
The emphasis on wisdom in Proverbs guarantees that this topic will play a prominent role in any interpretation of the book. However, the other texts included in that grouping will affect how that wisdom is understood, and the Wisdom classification directs readers’ attention away from, rather than toward the nuance and complexity of both the text and the wisdom it describes.100 In addition to the Sifrei Emet collection, which highlights the book’s emphasis on righteousness,101 and Poetry collection, which underscores the contribution of its poetic form to its message,102 the Solomonic collection is an ‘equally valid’ lens through which to view the book, which ties it with Song of Songs.103 Further, the strong association between Proverbs and Solomon invites the text to be read along with the variegated description of the king’s wisdom in 1 Kings 1–11, which intertwines wisdom with political, legal, and even cultic acumen.104 This creates a much more intricate intertextual network for
99 Crenshaw, Old Testament Wisdom, p. 115. 100 Peter T. H. Hatton, Contradiction in the Book of Proverbs: The Deep Waters of Counsel (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 17–45; Anne W. Stewart, ‘Wisdom’s Imagination: Moral Reasoning and the Book of Proverbs’, JSOT 40 (2016), pp. 352–53. 101 See Sun Myung Lyu, Righteousness in the Book of Proverbs (FAT II 55; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), pp. 115–33, 135. 102 See Anne W. Stewart, Poetic Ethics in Proverbs: Wisdom Literature and the Shaping of the Moral Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). 103 Dell, ‘Deciding the Boundaries’, p. 157. For explorations of this connection, see Katharine J. Dell, ‘Does the Song of Songs Have Any Connections to Wisdom?’, in Anselm C. Hagedorn (ed.), Perspectives on the Song of Songs (BZAW Berlin: de Gruyter, 2005); Kathryn Imray, ‘Love Is (Strong as) Death: Reading the Song of Songs through Proverbs 1–9’, Catholic Biblical Quarterly 75 (2013), pp. 649–65; Martin Ravndal Hauge, Solomon the Lover and the Shape of the Song of Songs (HBM 77; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2015), pp. 166–73. 104 See R. B. Y. Scott, ‘Solomon and the Beginnings of Wisdom in Israel’, in M. Noth and D. Winton Thomas (eds.), Wisdom in Israel and in the Ancient Near East (VTSup 3; Leiden: Brill, 1960), pp. 269–71.
24 the book.105 Scholars have begun to explore this network by grouping Proverbs with political narratives,106 legal texts that convey ethical paraenesis,107 or texts depicting the construction of cultic spaces and their psalmic liturgy.108 Rather than serving as evidence for historically unsubstantiated Wisdom ‘influence’,109 these groupings each reveal different facets of the book’s literary shape.
Much work remains to be done, but, significantly, when mapping the intertextual networks surrounding these texts in this way, wisdom as a concept is used to identify certain affiliations between texts, not defined on the basis of the texts chosen. Further, wisdom is only one feature that contributes to the understanding of each text; each is more than merely a
‘Wisdom’ text. The word wisdom has returned to the orbit of other concepts in the Israelite worldview, such as righteousness or holiness. This classification, long considered absolute and exclusive, has become relative and partial.
Genres may be emic, as authors intentionally compose their texts according to certain genre conventions, or they may be etic, and applied to a text later as a heuristic construct.110
Biblical scholarship treats Wisdom Literature as an emic genre, but the available evidence
105 See Will Kynes, ‘Wisdom Defined through Narrative and Intertextual Network: 1 Kings 1–11 and Proverbs’, in Katharine Dell and Will Kynes (eds.), Reading Proverbs Intertextually (LHBOTS; London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, forthcoming). 106 E.g., Gerhard von Rad, ‘Josephsgeschichte und ältere Chokma’, VTSup 1 (1953), pp. 120– 27; R. N. Whybray, The Succession Narrative: A Study of II Samuel 9–20; I Kings 1 and 2 (London: SCM, 1968); Shemaryahu Talmon, ‘“Wisdom” in the Book of Esther’, VT 13 (1963), pp. 419–55. 107 John Gammie argues ‘the entirety of the books of Deuteronomy, Proverbs and Sirach may be assigned without any hesitation’ to the genre ‘Paraenetic Literature’ (‘Paraenetic Literature: Toward a Morphology of a Secondary Genre’, Semeia 50 [1990], p. 66; emphasis original). 108 Raymond C. Van Leeuwen, ‘Cosmos, Temple, House: Building and Wisdom in Ancient Mesopotamia and Israel’, in Mark J. Boda and Jamie Novotny (eds.), From the Foundations to the Crenellations: Essays on Temple Building in the Ancient Near East and Hebrew Bible (AOAT 366; Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2010), pp. 399–421; Zoltán S. Schwáb, Toward an Interpretation of the Book of Proverbs: Selfishness and Secularity Reconsidered (JTISup 7; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2013), pp. 190–212. 109 See Weeks, Wisdom Literature, 135–42. 110 Charles L. Briggs and Richard Bauman, ‘Genre, Intertextuality, and Social Power’, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 2 (1992), p. 144.
25 does not indicate that the authors of those texts were knowingly writing in this genre. Instead the evidence suggests the genre first appeared in the mid-nineteenth century and was then projected back onto those texts. The collection of texts into etic genres is not in itself problematic. As Michael Fox observes, scholars have devised numerous categories after the fact to classify phenomena, such as ‘detective story’ or ‘phoneme’.111 He argues the influence of contemporary intellectual and religious ideas need not invalidate these concepts, and they can be applied today with any erroneous historically situated ‘extraneous assumptions’ set aside. Fox does acknowledge, though, that biblical scholarship may be ‘crippled’ by ideological influences ‘when the ideology predetermines the conclusion’. Wisdom, I have argued, has been crippled in this way since its birth; the philosophical presuppositions that inspired it are not ‘extraneous’ but intrinsic to its character, which they continue to define.
More than that, though an imposed category is not necessarily problematic, it becomes so when it creates an alternative centre of gravity for a group of texts, drawing them away from the rich variety of their original context into a new orbit around modern concerns.
This danger is magnified when the constructed nature of the etic genre is forgotten. Then, it may not only be confused with an emic genre, but also reified as a taxonomic category and connected with a particular ancient ‘tradition’ or ‘movement’ complete with its own social setting and group of authors and tradents, as has been the case with Wisdom. This obscures the genre’s contingent status as merely one way of grouping texts together according to particular affinities readers have recognized when viewing them from a certain cultural
is indeed used disproportionately frequently in ( המכח ) ’perspective. The word ‘wisdom
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job (along with 1 Kings 1–11). Those three books (along with
Deuteronomy and a number of psalms) may indeed have a more explicitly didactic tone (as
111 Michael V. Fox, ‘Three Theses on Wisdom’, in Mark R. Sneed (ed.), Was There a Wisdom Tradition? New Prospects in Israelite Wisdom Studies (AIL 23; Atlanta: SBL, 2015), p. 75– 76.
26 modern readers understand didacticism). The Wisdom Literature category, however, transforms the undeniable heuristic value of such comparisons into a restrictive hermeneutical hegemony as it defines each book as a ‘Wisdom text’, discouraging comparisons outside the category, unless those other texts conform to the characteristics of
Wisdom, demonstrating their ‘Wisdom influence’. This echo-chamber effect undermines the interpretive help Wisdom could provide, making it a hindrance.
Wisdom takes to its grave an extensive conceptual and paratextual apparatus—a purported ancient Israelite movement and current scholarly and publishing conventions that cordon off from the rest of the canon the so-called Wisdom books and those who wrote them and continue to write about them. Wisdom is just one of many genre groupings responding to shared affinities between these texts and others. It may be a genre but it is not the genre of these texts. They are not ‘Wisdom Literature’ in any definitive, categorical sense that would justify the assumption that they were composed in a separate school with a distinctive theology that requires its own introductions, specialists, courses, or conference sections—at least not any more than grouping texts based on their interest in other concepts, such as righteousness or holiness, would. Even as constructs, genres can have these types of real effects in the world as they shape readers’ expectations,112 which makes their uncritical use hermeneutically dangerous. As the Wisdom corpus is laid to rest in the dust, the network of canonical constitutive elements from which it came, it will reintegrate, as bodies do, into those same elements. From canon it was and to canon it will return. After the death of the
Wisdom Literature category, it is through this intertextual reintegration that both the concept of wisdom and the texts associated with it may be reborn.
112 Fox, ‘Three Theses on Wisdom’, p. 78.
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