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Now as I mentioned before, all of these types of Wisdom literature tend to be very universalistic,
humanistic, ahistorical. There's nothing particularly Israelite about them. There's no mention of
the exodus, there's no mention of Sinai or Moses or covenant or any of the early narratives
of the nation. And they [the Wisdom texts] are paralleled in great abundance in the writings
of other Ancient Near Eastern cultures. Sometimes there's an attempt to connect wisdom specifically
with belief in Yahweh. But biblical Wisdom like Ancient Near Eastern Wisdom generally
grounds morality on non-specific notions of prudence and God-fearing in a sort of non-specific
way, rather then on the historical covenant with Yahweh. So let's look at the Book of
Proverbs in a little more detail. Proverbs is the classic book of Wisdom. It contains
some material of great antiquity. Even though the book probably reached its final form only
in post-exilic times, surely a great deal of it is much older. There are many affinities
between Proverbs and Egyptian and Canaanite Wisdom literature, so that suggests that Israel
assimilated Wisdom material from the wider environment. The chief aim of Proverbs seems
to be the inculcation of wisdom as the means to social tranquility and a happy life. Young
people should learn to master their impulses. They should lead productive and sensible lives.
Many of the maxims are intended to educate sons, there's no mention of daughters here,
and a good deal of the first nine chapters is formally pedagogical, clearly pedagogical,
and can be compared quite productively with some Egyptian writings that we have from the
third millennium--the Egyptian teaching of Amenemopet, or the Babylonian Counsels of
Wisdom; tremendous parallels among these works. But these first nine chapters warn against
the seductions of foreign women and they urge young men to pursue wisdom. And wisdom here
is figured--almost hypostasized, an attribute or a characteristic that's almost put into
a concrete human form, wisdom is figured as a virtuous woman who promises insight and
counsel. This woman was created before all other created things. And wisdom again, figured
as a woman, assisted Yahweh in the creation--in the ordering, I should say, the ordering of
the universe. Wisdom was with God at that time. Proverbs values hard work and diligence,
and warns against excessive sleep and sex, and wine. Proverbs recommends honesty in your
business affairs and kindness, and loyalty, impartiality, sobriety, and humility, restraint,
and sincerity. Wealth is very nice, but it's not to be desired at the cost of calmness
and peace. The Wisdom sayings that appear in Proverbs are usually these short two-line
sentences in which the second line runs parallel in some way to the first. Some scholars have
classified the different kinds of parallelism you find in the book of Proverbs. An example
of synonymous parallelism, where the second line is essentially synonymous with the first--that's
found in Proverbs 22:1. It's a classic feature of biblical poetry in general. We'll see it
in the Psalms. For an example, "A good name is to be chosen rather then great riches
/ And favor," parallel to a good name, "is better then silver and gold," parallel to
great riches [RSV translation; see note 1]. So the two lines are somewhat synonymous.
In antithetic parallelism the two lines form a balanced pair of opposites, so in Proverbs
10:1, "A wise son makes a glad father / But a foolish son is a sorrow to his mother" [RSV
translation]. When the second line seems to complete the thought of the first, it's called
ascending parallelism. We find that in Proverbs 11:22, "Like a gold ring in the snout of a
pig / Is a beautiful woman bereft of sense."