Ancient Near Eastern Wisdom Literature (Didactic)

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Michael V. Fox
Keyword(s):  
Wisdom Literature ◽  
Near Eastern

Sacred Trees in the Garden of Eden and Their Ancient Near Eastern Precursors

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 267-301
Author(s):  
Michaela Bauks
Keyword(s):  
Sacred Space ◽  
Tree Of Life ◽  
Wisdom Literature ◽  
Garden Of Eden ◽  
Historical Approach ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
1 Enoch

Interpretations of the trees in the Garden of Eden misunderstand their significance by focusing on sin or a theological “fall.” A tradition-historical approach to the motif of trees in ancient Near Eastern literature and imagery reveals their multivalent quality. Trees are connected with fertility and goddess devotion but also with the power and divine sanction given to kings and dynasties, and with the potency of sacred space, on which humans and the divine come together and meet. As cross-temporal motifs, trees are regularly associated with life-giving and blessing (a plant of rejuvenation; a tree of life); a connection of trees to knowledge and meaning appears as well, in wisdom literature, and in the book of 1 Enoch. Language of a world tree or cosmic tree, though useful conceptually, is a modern imposition on the ancient evidence. More evident from the ancient setting is the image of felling trees, which indicates the downfall of human leaders, especially kings, because of their hubris. Ultimately, sacred trees have an ambivalent value, as a source of both contestation and progress.

scholarly journals Identifying Intentional Ambiguity

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nephtali Meshel
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Wisdom Literature ◽  
Multiple Representation ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Erotic Poetry ◽  
Single Text ◽  
Poetic Texts

Identifying Intentional Ambiguity   It is widely acknowledged that certain genres in ancient Near Eastern literature including the Hebrew Bible are characterized by intense ambiguity. In particular, divination, Wisdom literature and erotic poetry thrive on a special type of ambiguity—“double-edged words”—in which a single graphic or phonetic sequence is employed to convey a message and its precise opposite, at one and the same time. However, it is often difficult to demonstrate that a specific case of “double-edged wording” is in fact intentional rather than a product of an eager reader’s over-interpretation. The proposed paper offers three criteria for identifying intentionality in the formulation of ambiguous texts, based on examples from Biblical and other ancient Near Eastern divinatory, Wisdom and poetic texts: (1) Ungrammaticality: Sometimes an author is forced to use an ungrammatical form in order to preserve two opposite meanings. This happens when smoothing the grammar would have been achieved only at the price of losing the ambiguity; (2) Multiple representation: At times the same exact ambiguity is evidenced in identical contexts, but in different words and by means of different sentence-structures (occasionally even in different languages, e.g., Hebrew and Aramaic); when it can be demonstrated that coincidence is highly unlikely, the argument for intentional crafting is strong; (3) Straussian “Art of Writing”: When the author addresses an issue that was demonstrably contentious (from the author’s perspective), potentially-subversive formulations are particularly suspect. The intersection of two or three of these criteria in a single text strongly suggests intentionality

The Intertextual Network of Job and the Selective Nature of Genre

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Will Kynes
Keyword(s):  
Salient Feature ◽  
Wisdom Literature ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Recent Scholarship

The Wisdom Literature category has never been able to contain Job’s vast intertextual potential, and the category’s exclusive application distorts the book’s meaning through canonical separation, theological abstraction, and hermeneutical limitation. Job is embedded in a dense intertextual network. Appreciating the book’s distinctiveness requires reading it in relationship to as many literary groupings as its content and form justify. These include pre-modern genre designations, such as poetry, prophecy, and drama, as well as those produced by ancient Near Eastern parallels, such as the exemplary-sufferer texts. In recent scholarship, some of these have been resurrected, along with proposed adapted genres, such as dramatized lament or metaprophecy, and meta-genres, such as parody and polyphony. As selective perspectives, each of these proposed textual groupings underscores some salient feature of the book and thus combining them reveals the complexity and nuance of its meaning.

Wisdom Traditions and the Writings

2018 ◽  
pp. 83-98
Author(s):  
James L. Crenshaw
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Wisdom Literature ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
Wisdom Traditions ◽  
Wisdom Of Solomon ◽  
History Of

This chapter explores the wisdom literature and teachings of sages and scribes in ancient Israel, with a special focus on the postexilic and early Roman periods. Definitions of wisdom, sage, and scribe, their social status, their literary identities, and their teachings are discussed. Pertinent comparisons with ancient Near Eastern wisdom literature, Torah and Prophets in the Hebrew Bible, and the history of ancient Israel anchor presentations of Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Sirach, and Wisdom of Solomon. The importance and pertinence of this literature and its teachings for ancient and contemporary seekers of wisdom are argued throughout.

scholarly journals Ancient Near Eastern Wisdom Literature and the Bible

1994 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-222
Author(s):  
Kenneth A. Kitchen ◽  
Yoshiyuki MUCHIKI
Keyword(s):  
Wisdom Literature ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
The Bible

Advice

2021 ◽  
pp. 16-28
Author(s):  
Jacqueline Vayntrub
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Social Institution ◽  
Developmental Model ◽  
Wisdom Literature ◽  
Circular Reasoning ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Broad Category ◽  
Ben Sira ◽  
Identification And Characterization

Challenging long-held assumptions about the identification and characterization of Wisdom Literature, this chapter examines: (1) how the scholarly category of biblical Wisdom Literature entails a developmental model of literary development in which the book of Proverbs functions as a paradigmatic text; (2) the circular reasoning involved in evaluating texts according to vocabulary and genre; and (3) other literary strategies shared by these texts, including notions of knowledge, its transmission, and survival across generational lines. Beyond a developmental model, a broad category of knowledge production and literary craft facilitates comparisons between texts like Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job, Ben Sira, and others. These texts build and comment on the ancient Near Eastern literary and social institution of father-to-son instruction. The advice given in these instructions, and their framing themselves, reflect on the transmission of life-preserving and life-enriching knowledge across generational lines that enables the father to transcend his own individual death and persist in the success of his descendants.

scholarly journals Reading Proverbs 3:1-12 in its social and ideological context

2002 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
G.T.M. Prinsloo
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Wisdom Literature ◽  
Hebrew Poetry ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ideological Context

Proverbs 3:1-12 is a masterful example of Hebrew poetry. It is quite permissible to analyse and enjoy the poem for its own sake. However, it should be taken into account that the text was written from a wisdom perspective, implying that it had a didactic function in the social context in which it originated. In this aticle the text is investigated on three levels. It commences with an analysis of the text as a poem, then moves towards an analysis of the type of society where such a text might have originated in order to determine the ideology that served as motivating principle for that society. In the process the role of Israelite wisdom literature in the context of the Ancient Near Eastern wisdom corpus and the influence of wisdom teachers upon society will also be touched upon. This will lead to some conclusions about the relevance of studying this literature for our own society.

scholarly journals The Characterization of Animals in Sumerian Fables

1970 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jill Marcum
Keyword(s):  
Written Language ◽  
Wisdom Literature ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Classical Education ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Successful Communication ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Symbolic Meanings ◽  
Third Millennium Bce ◽  
Animal Images

Although classical education is waning and general historical knowledge is at its nadir, many ancient fables are still widely known and commonly cited in spoken language. For example, Aesop’s fable The Boy Who Cried Wolf has resulted in the phrase “crying wolf,” which—even today—is a cultural shorthand for expressing the idea of raising a false alarm. The successful communication of this idea, however, rests on culture: the shared understanding of the wolf as dangerous. If we thought of wolves as we do pet dogs, the reference would be lost.Fables constitute a subgenre of ancient Near Eastern ‘wisdom literature;’ they are short narratives utilizing anthropomorphized animals to impart conventional wisdom. Like proverbs, fables “belong to the speech of everyday life” (Alster 1997). Perhaps for this reason, they were among the first compositions that young scribes learned to write in ancient Mesopotamia. Sumerian fables are attested as early as the mid-third millennium BCE. Much like written language itself, fables traffic in tradition and “habitual connection” (Peirce 1885) in order to convey their meaning. This meaning is so strong that it can be carried even via elliptical (truncated) renderings, as in the example of “crying wolf.” This shorthand is possible, in part, because animals are not just things themselves, they are loaded with symbolic meanings that are imparted in fables via their role, their actions, and the words they speak. In fables, animals are characters, and these characterizations can reveal the context and values of the culture that created them.As Falkowitz (1980) notes, consistently and extensively employed animal images can become culturally ingrained as rhetorical topoi: the fox is cunning, the bee is busy. The meaning in these images” is derived from their characteristics, which fables can uniquely elucidate for us. Through the understanding that fables provide, we can more successfully “read” both the elliptical references to animals in proverbs and in images. Moreover, understanding animals in this way can provide us a method to access the contexts and values of ancient Mesopotamians without privileging our contemporary, Western symbolic or ethical norms.I will provide an overview of the small corpus of available Sumerian fables and analysis of the roles of the animals characterized within them. These will be linked to Sumerian proverbs and compared to ancient Greek fables to form a starting point for conceptualizing fauna in the ancient world.

Proverbs

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy J. Sandoval ◽  
Joseph McDonald
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Biblical Theology ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Wisdom Literature ◽  
New Era ◽  
Relative Lack ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Relative Neglect ◽  
The Many ◽  
Wisdom Tradition

Up to 2000, it was common to hear of the relative neglect of the study of Proverbs and Wisdom literature in biblical studies. Those days are over. Since about 1970, in fact, study of the Israelite Wisdom tradition, and the Book of Proverbs in particular, a leading exemplar of that tradition, has exploded. There is no longer any shortage of introductory texts, commentaries, and specialized monographs on Proverbs. The watershed moment is usually traced back to the publication of Gerhard von Rad’s Weisheit in Israel (1970). Von Rad lent his considerable weight as a “senior statesman” of biblical criticism to the study of Proverbs and the Wisdom literature, producing a masterful and provocative monograph, to which scholars still, almost in obligatory fashion, often situate their work. The same year, William McKane published his important and much-discussed commentary. Yet even before 1970, there were significant signs of life in Proverbs and Wisdom studies. In 1965 both McKane and R. N. Whybray each published significant works, and 1968 saw the appearance of Hans-Jürgen Hermisson’s important monograph and Michael Fox’s study of the religion of Proverbs. The relative lack of attention to Proverbs in the mid-20th century is usually attributed to the fact that its status as a species of ancient Near Eastern “international” Wisdom literature, which did not much concern itself with leading Hebrew Bible/Old Testament themes such as the Exodus and Covenant, was well established soon after Budge’s publication of the Egyptian Instruction of Amenemope in 1923. As a result, Proverbs and Wisdom studies often took a backseat to the study of other biblical books and themes, especially those whose leading religious ideas were of much significance to the many scholars concerned with biblical theology. By 1963, however, Brevard Childs had famously announced, perhaps prematurely, the demise of the biblical theology movement, and the stage was set for a new era in Proverbs studies with the appearance of Gerhard von Rad’s seminal text.

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