At one time, scholars believed that Solomon had established writing schools in Jerusalem, similar to the training of Egyptian scribes. It was learned that he married Pharaoh`s daughter and therefore probably knew Egypt. Solomon has also been credited with “Solomonic enlightenment,” and important biblical sources, such as the Yahwist story in the Pentateuch, have been attributed to his reign. However, this view has lost popularity. It is now recognized that Jerusalem was a very small place during the reign of Solomon (around 950 BC) and would not have needed many scribes. (It also seems unlikely that a pharaoh would have given his daughter to the king of such a small town.) The city developed considerably more than 200 years later during the reign of King Hezekiah, and the wisdom tradition probably developed at that time. In fact, a section of Proverbs would consist of Proverbs collected by “the men of Hezekiah” (Proverbs 25:1). “Literature of Wisdom.” Definitions.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2022.
Web. October 3, 2022. . The most famous examples of wisdom literature are found in the Bible. [19] [20] Wisdom[a] is a central theme in the books of wisdom,[b] i.e. Proverbs, Psalms, Job, the Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, the Book of Wisdom, the Wisdom of Sirachus, and to some extent Baruch. Not all psalms are generally associated with the wisdom tradition. [23] Others like the Epistle of Aristeas, the Pseudo-Phocylids, and the 4 Maccabees are also considered wisdom. To say that wisdom books belong to a macrogender or a vaguely defined gender does not mean denying that there are significant differences between them.
Literary critics are talking more and more about genres in the sense of prototype theory. The idea is that we recognize such things by identifying prototypical examples. For example, we might think of a kitchen chair as a prototypical chair and recognize other chairs as much as they resemble it. A throne or piano stool are also items to sit on, but they are very different from kitchen chairs. In the case of biblical wisdom literature, the book of Proverbs is prototypical. Preacher deviates from it in some ways, but still recognizably resembles it. The book of Job is more distant because it is constructed as a dialogue with a narrative framework. The arguments for including Job in wisdom literature are based primarily on the discourses in the dialogues, which are very similar to wisdom instructions. The Corpus Hermeticum is a work of Egyptian-Greek wisdom literature in the form of a dialogue between Hermes Trismegistus and a disciple. Most of the text dates from the 1st-4th centuries AD. Chr., although the original materials the texts may be older; [13] Recent research confirms that the syncretic nature of Hermeticism originated in Roman Egypt, but the content of the tradition corresponds to the older wisdom literature of ancient Egypt, suggesting origins in the time of the pharaohs.
[14] [15] The Hermetic texts of the Egyptians dealt mainly with the invocation of spirits, the reinvigoration of statues, Babylonian astrology, and the new practice of alchemy; Other mystical themes include divine unity, purification of the soul, and rebirth through enlightenment of the spirit. [16] Wisdom literature is a literary genre widespread in the ancient Near East. This genre is characterized by wisdom sayings that are believed to teach divinity and virtue. The key tenet of wisdom literature is that although traditional storytelling techniques are used, books also claim to offer insight and wisdom about nature and reality. The most famous examples of wisdom literature are found in the Bible. The following biblical books are classified as wisdom literature: ⁕Book of Job ⁕Psalms ⁕Proverbs ⁕Preachers ⁕Song of Songs ⁕Wisdom ⁕Sirach The genre of writings of mirror princes, which has a long history in Islamic and Western Renaissance literature, represents a secular element related to biblical wisdom literature. In classical antiquity, Hesiod`s advice poetry, especially his works and days, was considered a genre similar to Middle Eastern wisdom literature. Wisdom literature is a literary genre widespread in the ancient Near East.
It consists of statements by sages and sages who offer teachings on divinity and virtue. Although this genre uses traditional oral storytelling techniques, it has been disseminated in written form. It may be more useful to think of biblical wisdom literature as a tradition. Originally, it was a literature formulated for the training of scribes in the service of the kingdom. These were not liturgical traditions or claims of revelation. It was very convenient in its development. After the Babylonian exile, however, there was no longer a king in Jerusalem, and the high priest and the temple became centers of power. The Torah of Moses, which reached its present form in Persian times, became increasingly important. Eventually, this led to changes in the writing program.
Ben Sira is enthusiastic in his admiration for the High Priest (Sir 50) and cites all the heroes of biblical history as examples of wisdom (Sir 44-49, the praise of the fathers). He also identifies wisdom with the Torah of Moses, as mentioned above, although he does not dwell on it in detail. His book is still an example of doctrinal literature in the Proverbs tradition, but he has a broader view of the sources of wisdom. There has been some discussion about whether “wisdom” should be considered a literary genre. On the one hand, wisdom literature consists of a collection of books that have much in common and that can be usefully grouped together. For some researchers, this is enough to justify classification as a genus. On the other hand, it is not a unique literary form as, say, a vision or a psalm. If we were to reserve the label “genre” for a single literary form, then we could say that the “wisdom guide” or even the proverbial collection is a genre. “Wisdom” could be described as a macrogenre – a type of writing that uses a group of related literary forms. The use of generic terms in ancient literature is rather arbitrary. The book of Proverbs, for example, is called “mishle Shlomo,” which usually translates to “Proverbs of Solomon.” However, a “mashal” is not a direct equivalent of the saying.
The term can also refer to a parable or allegory. (The root meaning seems to be something that can be used by analogy, but it is not precisely defined.) This is not to say that people in ancient times did not perceive generic relationships. The fact that what we call “books of wisdom” were often called “solomonics” in ancient times is a kind of rudimentary generic analysis. This is true even for books that could not have been written by Solomon, such as the Wisdom of Solomon, written in good Hellenistic Greek and presumably dated to the turn of the ages. It also seems clear that the authors of biblical wisdom were aware of the affinities between their compositions and Egyptian instructions. The wisdom literature of Sumeria and Babylonia is among the oldest in the world, with Sumerian documents dating back to the third millennium BC and Babylonian documents from the second millennium BC. Many of the surviving texts discovered in Nippur are as old as the 18th century BC. Most of these texts are wisdom in the form of dialogues or hymns, such as the hymn to Enlil, the All-Benevolent of ancient Sumer.
[1] In ancient Egyptian literature, wisdom literature belonged to the genre Sebayt (“teaching”), which flourished during the Egyptian Middle Kingdom and became canonical during the New Kingdom. Notable works of this genre are the Instructions of Kagemni, the Maxims of Ptahhotep, the Instructions of Amenemhat, the Loyalist Doctrine and the Corpus Hermeticum. [9] Hymns such as A Prayer to Re-Har-akhti (c.
