Literary Genres of Old Testament Wisdom

2021 ◽  
pp. 352-372
Author(s):  
Markus Witte
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
Ben Sira ◽  
History Of Research ◽  
Linguistic Unit ◽  
Wisdom Of Solomon ◽  
History Of

This essay briefly traces the history of research into Wisdom genres (Gattungen) in the Old Testament. It outlines the following as essential linguistic, semantic, and pragmatic criteria of a Wisdom genre: (1) a horizontal form of communication that contains a dialogical element, even in monologues or didactic poems; (2) terminology that is directed at knowledge; and (3) a pedagogical focus. Two major genres can be distinguished in the literary history of Israelite-Jewish Wisdom: the instructional book and the commentary. In the Old Testament, only the instructional book is found. Its sub-genres include instruction, to which belong also treatise and testament as well as diatribe and protreptic, the didactic poem, with its special variants of the Wisdom psalm and the meditation, didactic dialogue, which can develop into dispute, and the didactic story. The smallest common linguistic unit of the poetically composed Wisdom texts is the saying. Intra-textual commentaries are offered by the “Praise of the Fathers” in the book of Ben Sira (Sir 44–49) and the “midrash on Exodus” in the Wisdom of Solomon (Wis 11–19). Extra-textual commentaries are performed by Jewish-Hellenistic exegetes, by Philo, and the pesharim from Qumran.

The Genres of the Pentateuch and Their Social Settings

2021 ◽  
pp. 361-378
Author(s):  
Angela Roskop Erisman
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Genre Theory ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
Social Settings ◽  
History Of ◽  
Classic Form ◽  
Stable Forms ◽  
Generic Complexity

The ability to recognize genres has been central to modern critical study of the Pentateuch since the work of Hermann Gunkel at the turn of the twentieth century. This essay surveys the legal, administrative, and literary genres used in the Pentateuch, offering a sense of its generic complexity. Genres are defined not as the fixed and stable forms used to classify texts, as understood by classic form-critical method, but as idealized cognitive models employed as tools for writing and interpreting texts, an understanding drawn from modern genre theory. Because genres are situated in social contexts, Gunkel saw genre as central to writing a history of Israel’s literature. This essay surveys the limitations of Gunkel’s vision yet identifies a way to reconnect with it and write a more organic literary history, one that may intersect with but also at times challenge the results of source- and redaction-critical methods.

Deciding the Boundaries of ‘Wisdom’

2020 ◽  
pp. 19-31
Author(s):  
Katharine J. Dell
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Family Resemblance ◽  
Song Of Songs ◽  
Ben Sira ◽  
Wisdom Of Solomon ◽  
Complex Relationships ◽  
Joseph Narrative ◽  
Succession Narrative

Whilst it is generally agreed that the book of Proverbs is the mainspring of ‘wisdom’, there is considerable disagreement as to what exactly, beyond Proverbs, to include in the wisdom category and what the criteria for inclusion should be. That Job and Ecclesiastes should also form this core and that it should be further defined by the apocryphal books of Ben Sira and the Wisdom of Solomon is often taken for granted, but the material is very diverse in nature and genre. Then the question arises, should the net be widened to other parts of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, to narratives such as the Joseph Narrative and Succession Narrative or to a slippery selection of psalms that appear to be ‘wisdom’ in character, to Song of Songs and beyond. In fact, how do we classify any text showing significant wisdom influence? Indeed, is this categorization of ‘wisdom’ helpful at all? In this chapter, I suggest that there is a ‘core’ of wisdom material and that, as I have argued elsewhere, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes make up this core. Here, I go beyond this statement to evaluate the associations of other material with this core and suggest that the notion of family resemblance is a helpful descriptor for complex relationships between this material. I also consider the role of Solomon as the ‘father’ of wisdom and as the (symbolic?) figure that holds this ‘family’ together.

Genre Practice in Literary Historiography: A Romanian Case

Transilvania ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 45-51
Author(s):  
Ana Țăranu
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Approach ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Genre Theory ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
Literary Historiography ◽  
Genre Criticism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Romanian Literature ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Relationship

Premised on the pervasiveness of generic categories within literary historiography, the present analysis attempts to delineate the generic idioms present within three histories of Romanian literature (authored by G. Călinescu, Nicolae Manolescu and Mihai Iovănel, respectively). Engaging a descriptively historical, rather than theoretical, approach to genre and its metadiscourses, the paper begins with an abridged version of the cardinal disputes of genre criticism. Subsequently, it comparatively addresses the presence of genre within the three volumes, aiming to locate them within recognizable frameworks of genericity and to establish the overlapping territories of their generic landscapes. Thus, it distinguishes G. Călinescu as a practitioner of post-Romantic genre theory, further showcasing how some of his central aestheticist positions survive in Nicolae Manolescu’s moderately formalist account of the issue. Against the backdrop of their more conservative, teleological historiographical projects, Mihai Iovănel’s 2021 Istoria Literaturii Române Contemporane 1990-2020 [The History of Contemporary Romanian Literature 1990-2020] displays a distinct methodological apparatus, predicated on the author’s rejection of the paradigmatic autonomy of the aesthetic. His employment of materialist theories of art is corelative to a conception of genre as a contingent, empirically determined instrument of analysis, which, far from being a rhetorically stable, abstract category, actively mediates the relationship between social and aesthetic history. This shift engenders substantial amendments to the physiognomy of literary history as genre, enabling it to encompass extra-literary (and noncanonical) phenomena. Keywords: literary genres, literary history, Romanian literature, Mihai Iovănel.

The Arabic Novel and History

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Allen
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Historical Novel ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
The Novel ◽  
History Of The Novel ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
History Of ◽  
Arabic Speaking ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter examines the relationship between the Arabic novel and history within the context of the Arabic-speaking world, and in particular the process of producing a literary history of the novel genre written in Arabic. It first considers the early development of the novel genre in Arabic as part of a cultural movement that gained impetus in the nineteenth century, with particular emphasis on the interplay of two cultural forces: the importation of Western ideas (including literary genres) and the role of the premodern Arab-Islamic cultural heritage in each subregion. It then discusses examples of narrative from the premodern heritage of Arabic literature before turning to the history of the Arabic novel. The chapter also presents examples of the Arabic historical novel, one of which is Sālim Ḥimmīsh’s Al-‘Allāma (2001, The Polymath).

scholarly journals Alttestamentliche Voraussetzungen fur das Verstandnis des Bundesmotivs im Neuen Testament Teil 2: Forschungsgeschichtlicher Oberblick, Fazit und Ausblick 1

1997 ◽  
Vol 53 (1/2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Petrus J. Grabe
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Important Research ◽  
New Covenant ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
History Of Research ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
History Of

The Old Testament background for understanding the covenant motif in the New Testament - Part 2: Overview of the history of research and conclusion In this article an overview is given of the function of the concept 'covenant' as it is employed in a number of prominent Old Testament theologies in the post-Eichrodt period, namely that of Von Rad, Zimmerli, Clements, and Westermann. The important contribution by Lothar Perlitt, as well as the recent publication by Rendtorff on the covenant formula is also discussed. Despite certain points of criticism which can be levelled against their comparison between the notion of covenant in the Old Testament and that found in Ancient Near Eastern treaties, the important research of Baltzer and Mendenhall still needs to be considered seriously. Before a conclusion is drawn, the reader is pointed to the importance of the promise of a new covenant within the context of the Old Testament.

Picturesque Literature and the Transformation of the American Landscape, 1835-1874

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Evelev
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Lydia Maria Child ◽  
Public Parks ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
Nineteenth Century America ◽  
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ◽  
American Landscape ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

This book examines the central role that the picturesque, a popular mode of scenery appreciation that advocated for an improved and manipulated natural landscape, played in the social, spatial, and literary history of mid-nineteenth-century America. It argues that the picturesque was not simply a landscape aesthetic, but also a discipline of seeing and imaginatively shaping the natural world that was widely embraced by bourgeois Americans to transform the national landscape in their own image. Through the picturesque, midcentury bourgeois Americans remade rural spaces into tourist scenery, celebrated the city streets as spaces of cultural diversity, created new urban public parks, and made suburban domesticity a national ideal. This picturesque transformation was promulgated in a variety of popular literary genres, all of which focused on landscape description and inculcated readers into the protocols of picturesque visual discipline as social reform. Many of these genres have since been dubbed “minor” or have even been forgotten in our literary history, but the ranks of the writers of this picturesque literature include those from the most canonical (Hawthorne, Melville, Thoreau, Emerson, and Poe) to major authors of the period who are now less familiar to us (such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Lydia Maria Child, Nathaniel Parker Willis, and Margaret Fuller) to those who are now completely forgotten. Individual chapters of the book link picturesque literary genres to the spaces that the genres helped to transform and, in the process, create what is recognizably our modern American landscape.

scholarly journals Review of: Dobykin D. G. Non-canonical Books of the Old Testament: Schoolbook. Saint-Petersburg: Publishing House of Saint-Petersburg Theological Academy, 2020. 168 p. ISBN: 978-5-906627-81-0

2020 ◽  
pp. 249-251
Author(s):  
Михаил Всеволодович Ковшов
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Publishing House ◽  
Associate Professor ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Saint Petersburg ◽  
Original Language ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Wisdom Of Solomon ◽  
History Of

До сих пор на русском языке не было ни одного специального пособия по неканоническим книгам Ветхого Завета, поэтому появление рецензируемого учебника нельзя не приветствовать. Тем более, что написано оно признанным специалистом своего дела, доцентом кафедры библеистики СПбДА Дмитрием Георгиевичем Добыкиным, из-под пера которого вышел уже не один добротный учебник по православной библеистике. Пособие имеет грамотную и хорошо продуманную структуру. Первая часть посвящена рассмотрению Второй книги Ездры, книг Товита, Юдифи, Премудрости Соломона, Премудрости Иисуса, сына Сирахова, Послания Иеремии, Книги пророка Варуха, трёх книг Маккавейских и Третьей книги Ездры. Каждая книга рассматривается по следующему общему плану: 1. Содержание и богословие. 2. Авторство. 3. Время и место написания. 4. Язык оригинала. 5. История текста и толкования. The book is a work of great interest to the readers of the Bible, and it is a work of great value for the reader, and for the readers of the Bible. The more so because it was written by an acknowledged specialist in his field, Associate Professor at the Department of Biblical Studies of St. Petersburg Academy of Education Dmitry Georgievich Dobykin, from whose pen came many good-quality textbooks on Orthodox biblical studies. The manual has a competent and well thought out structure. The first part is dedicated to the Second Book of Ezra, the books of Tobit, Judith, the Wisdom of Solomon, the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach, the Epistle of Jeremiah, the Book of Baruch, the three books of Maccabees and the Third Book of Ezra. Each book is treated in the following general way: 1. Content and theology. 2. Authorship. 3. Time and place of writing. 4. The original language. 5. History of the text and interpretation.

Pharaoh’s Sorcerers Revisited: A Sahidic Exodus Apocryphon (P.Lips. Inv. 2299) and the Legend of Jannes and Jambres the Magicians Between Judaism, Christianity, and Native Egyptian Tradition

2018 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 148-198
Author(s):  
Frederic Krueger
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Literary History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Canonical Version

Abstract This article presents an edition of a 4th century Coptic fragment of a hitherto unknown Old Testament apocryphon that gives a non-canonical version of the events of Exodus. It offers a specifically Egyptian literary history of the legendary magicians Jannes and Jambres, which highlights the so far unappreciated dependence of their own Apocryphon on pagan Egyptian tales about magicians.

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