An Obituary for "Wisdom Literature"

Abstract

In the rise of Wisdom Literature in less than a century from obscurity to ubiquity, a number of crucial questions have been left unanswered. Most fundamentally, when, how, and why did the category, comprised essentially of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job, develop? The definitional issues long plaguing Wisdom scholarship can be traced to that unquestioned “universal consensus.” This book unearths its origin, describes its distorting effect, and proposes an alternative approach. Absent from early Jewish and Christian interpretation, the Wisdom category first emerged in modern scholarship, with the traits associated with it, such as universalism, humanism, rationalism, and secularism, suspiciously mirroring the ideals of its nineteenth-century German birthplace. Since it was originally assembled to reflect modern values, biblical scholars have struggled to define the corpus on any other basis or integrate it into the theology of the Hebrew Bible. The problem, however, is not only why the texts were perceived in this way, but that they are perceived in only one way at all. This book builds on recent literary and cognitive theory to create an alternative approach to genre that integrates hermeneutical insight from various genre groupings. This theory is then applied to Job, Ecclesiastes, and Proverbs, mapping out the complex intertextual network contributing to each book’s meaning. Seen from multiple perspectives, these texts emerge in three dimensions, as facets previously obscured by the category are illuminated once again. The death of the Wisdom Literature category offers new life to both the so-called Wisdom texts and the concept of wisdom.