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Kynes Wisdom Tradition [Pre-publication version of: “The Modern Scholarly Wisdom Tradition and the Threat of Pan-sapientialism: A Case Report.” Pages 11–38 in Was There a Wisdom Tradition?: New Prospects in Israelite Wisdom Studies. Edited by Mark Sneed. Ancient Israel and Its Literature. Atlanta: SBL, 2015.] The Modern Scholarly Wisdom Tradition and the Threat of Pan-Sapientialism: A Case Report Will Kynes Modern historical research itself is not only research, but the handing down of tradition. (Gadamer 2004, 285) Introduction Biblical scholarship is currently suffering from a “Wisdom”1 category that is plagued by definitional deficiency, amorphous social location, and hemorrhaging “influence,” among other maladies.2 A generation ago, Gerhard von Rad ([1970] 1993, 7–8) had already raised questions about the genre’s survival, asking “whether the attractive codename ‘wisdom’ is nowadays not more of a hindrance than a help,” but prognoses of its imminent demise have recently increased. Weeks (2010, 85) wonders “if, indeed, it is a genre in any meaningful sense.” Thanks in large part to its imprecise definition, he also worries that, at least in the discussion of origin and influence, the Wisdom category “has become more of a liability than an asset,” which these debates “would do well to retire” (141). Similarly, Matthew Goff (2010, 325) has observed that the prospects of wisdom as a viable category of genre can seem rather bleak. One might suppose that in the next generation of scholarship the term “wisdom” might seem like a rather antiquated scholarly term, such as the amphictyony, the putative tribal federation of ancient Israel, or the Elohist source. Indeed, the session at the SBL annual meeting in 2012 that discussed whether a Wisdom tradition ever existed, inspired by Mark Sneed’s article, “Is the ‘Wisdom Tradition’ a Tradition?” (2011), suggests that the category, if not on life support, is certainly in critical condition. 1 The quotation marks encompassing the category’s title reflect the fact that it is a scholarly convention. For ease of reading, I will henceforth dispense with them. When “Wisdom” is capitalized, it refers to the literary category and is used here interchangeably with the fuller title, “Wisdom Literature.” 2 For a recent incisive discussion of the current difficulties in the study of Wisdom, see Weeks 2010 and the summary in Kynes forthcoming. 1 Goff (2010, 334-35), like von Rad ([1970] 1993, 7) and Weeks (2010, 144), however, thinks the Wisdom category is worth preserving despite its significant difficulties as long as scholars are willing to acknowledge that it is a subjective, modern projection onto the texts, which could be mistaken.3 A brief overview of the past century of Wisdom study will suggest, however, that this modern scholarly tradition may, in fact, be the source of Wisdom’s definitional problems. As a result, the survival of the category will require significant changes in lifestyle. I will suggest the discussion of biblical Wisdom exercise more hermeneutical restraint, cut back on its exclusive claims to define the texts it includes and their historical origins, and add more intertextual connections to its interpretive diet. Otherwise, the category risks succumbing to meaninglessness, either as an unexamined scholarly “consensus” or as an all-encompassing and indistinct umbrella term, thereby, indeed, acting more of a hindrance than a help. The treatment of this ailment must, however, be determined by a diagnosis of its underlying causes, and this begins with the patient’s history. Case Presentation According to common accounts, Wisdom developed as a distinct subject with a corresponding corpus in the Hebrew Bible soon after the turn of the twentieth century.4 Though closer study of the history of Wisdom interpretation reveals this date to be at least half a century too late,5 the discovery of a definite literary relationship between Prov 22:17– 24:22 and the Egyptian Instruction of Amenemope in 1924 did indeed ignite new scholarly interest in the subject (Erman 1924a, b; cf. Scott 1970, 23-24; Crenshaw 1976, 5-6). By the outbreak of World War II, a deluge of research addressed many of the questions that continue to shape the study of Wisdom, such as the extent of parallels from the Ancient Near East 3 See, similarly, Fox 2012, 232. 4 E.g., Ludger Schwienhorst-Schönberger (2013, 119), who does not identify a specific originating work. James Crenshaw (1976, 3) suggests Johannes Meinhold, in his Die Weisheit Israels in Spruch, Sage und Dichtung (1908), was the first to recognize the separate existence of Wisdom. Crenshaw is apparently following Walter Baumgartner (1933, 261). R. N. Whybray (1995, 1) is the only modern scholar I have encountered who posits a date before the twentieth century, pointing to S. R. Driver’s An Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament (1891, 369) as an early indication of the category. 5 Already in 1851, Johann Bruch had published Weisheits-Lehre der Hebräer, which focused on the Wisdom corpus still widely accepted today and was influential in the discussion of Wisdom in the latter half of the nineteenth century. For the development of the Wisdom category in the nineteenth century, see Kynes forthcoming. 2 (ANE), the structure of Wisdom thought, and the identification and social setting of Wisdom forms (Crenshaw 1976, 6).6 Despite the initial interest in Wisdom, its contribution to biblical scholarship more broadly remained unclear. After World War II, this new darling of biblical study fell into disfavor. The enthusiasm for finding connections between biblical Wisdom texts and those from the ANE became a liability when a new scholarly movement brought the theological significance of Israelite history and Hebrew thought to the fore. Crenshaw (1976, 1-2) offers G. Ernest Wright (1952) and Horst D. Preuss (1970) as representative bookends for this trend. Both considered Wisdom’s affinity with foreign Wisdom an indication of a worldview they did not hesitate to call “pagan.” Wisdom began to be considered a Fremdkörper (“foreign body”) in the Hebrew Bible (Gese 1958, 2) and treated as a virtual “vermiform appendix” to Old Testament theology (Scott 1970, 39). In fact, in the first volume of von Rad’s Old Testament Theology ([1957] 2001, 355), Wisdom is a literal appendix, tacked on at the end as “Israel’s answer” to YHWH. During this period the common and continuing tendency to define Wisdom negatively, by what it lacks, is pronounced. The absence of revelatory content, Israel’s covenant with Yahweh, the law revealed at Sinai, and Yahweh’s intervention in history on behalf of his chosen people all contribute to the definition and consequent marginalization of Wisdom. Characterized as secular, empirical, humanistic, international, and universal, it found only a secondary place in relation to the sacred traditions and specific Yahwistic beliefs that loomed large in the theological thought of this period, suffering “the fate of one who is insufficiently Hebraic at a time when a premium is placed on Hebrew thought” (Crenshaw 1976, 2; cf. Murphy 1969, 290). Over the course of the 1960s, however, the emphasis on Israelite history that had sidelined Wisdom eventually fell into disfavor itself. Perhaps due to a new appreciation for Wisdom’s “universalism” (Crenshaw 1976, 3; cf. Crenshaw 1998, 1), its relationship to the rest of the canon swung to the opposite pole as studies on purported Wisdom influence proliferated. According to these studies, Wisdom played a formative role in books across the canon.7 Wisdom, once disregarded, now gained new prominence, inspiring Roland Murphy (1969, 290) to ask, “Where has Old Testament wisdom failed to appear?” 6 For further bibliography from this period, see Baumgartner 1933, 259-61; Scott 1970, 23 n. 3. Many of these issues had already been raised in the previous century (see Smend 1995, 267; Dell 2013; Kynes forthcoming), however the attention Wisdom received during this period did expose them to a broader audience. 7 The texts that have been claimed to demonstrate Wisdom influence include the primeval history (Gen 1–11), the Joseph Narrative (Gen 37–50), Exodus, Deuteronomy, the Succession 3 The arguments for Wisdom influence were based on affinities in vocabulary, subject matter, and worldview (Crenshaw 1976, 9). The same types of arguments continued to be made with ANE texts (though with greater caution), so in this period the number of texts connected to the Wisdom movement was expanding in both directions at once, across the canon as well as the ANE, with the biblical Wisdom texts testifying to ANE influence on Israelite Wisdom, and other biblical texts from across the canon revealing Wisdom’s influence in Israel. Thus, though this development was an about-face in regard to the relationship between Wisdom and the rest of the canon, it continued to see Wisdom as something distinctive in Israel, defined to a large degree by its contact and similarity with other texts from the ANE. This attempt at the reintegration of Wisdom with the rest of the canon did not make Wisdom more Israelite, but Israel more sapiential, as the emphasis on Wisdom’s influence suggests.8 However, each connection with another text diluted that very distinctiveness of Wisdom which influence studies had depended on to be both convincing and significant (Weeks 2010, 140).9 The texts and associated features that defined Wisdom expanded as the popularity of these studies initiated a chain reaction, in which arguments for one purported wisdom-influenced text invited the association of yet another with Wisdom. Thus, Hans Walter Wolff’s (1964) conclusion that Amos’ intellectual home was the wisdom of tribal society built on Johannes Fichtner’s (1949) earlier argument that the prophet Isaiah was a product of a Wisdom school (see Scott 1970, 36–37). Similarly, R.
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