Biblical Wisdom Literature in the Ancient Near East

The scroll of the Hebrew Scriptures that is now referred to as Proverbs is among some of the most popular texts in the collection. Out of all of the Old Testament literature, behind the Psalms, Proverbs is the book most commonly added to pocket New Testaments. However, as Tremper Longman notes, “Archaeologists have uncovered ancient writings from a number of cultures in the vicinity of Israel that have an uncanny similarity in form and content to the books of the Old Testament” (Longman 61). This discovery has caused crisis for the faiths of many who felt the need to believe that biblical wisdom literature (Proverbs being the most popular) must not have had anything similar to it. Some, in an attempt to feel better about such statements, go to greater lengths than necessary to deny parallels between the literature and the wisdom given through them both.

Personally, I have come to not be as bothered by this finding as I would have been at first. Seeing that the theologies of the biblical authors were geographically, linguistically, politicaly, culturally, and socially situated does not come as a surprise to me when I consider my own theological presuppositions - Which are far removed from the Bible in every sense previously listed. Humans can only think and communicate within their own culture; thinking about this helped me to understand that the Scriptures have every right to be similar in many senses to those of the surrounding nations. This practice is true of jewish sages from the Second-Temple period as well. As noted by the scholar James H. Charlesworth notes on a collection of pseudepigrapha: “Generally characteristic of these excerpts…is an apologetic claim that the best Greek ideas are derived from the Jews” (Charlesworth 775). Not only should contemporary western Christians learn to let this fact be fine, but doing this would be line with the tradition of followers of Yahweh since the completion of the Hebrew Bible canon. So, do the parallels between Proverbs and the other wisdom literature of the ancient Near East bother me? Not much.

Taking such a stance a step further, I even believe that understanding the ancient Near Eastern background of the wisdom literature helps us to better understand the wisdom that is being portrayed in it and how to interpret it. Knowing that this selection of the Scriptures are situated in this time allows me to understand some proverbs that come across as strange or unsettling. I know that the things that I do in my own culture would be weird to removed from me by 2,000 years and 6,600 miles (like keeping the tooth brush that I use twice a day to clean my mouth in the same room as the one that I was all the dirt off my skin and release unclean bodily fluids in). Further, the fact that these Scriptures are so similar to those of other nations, lets the reader who is aware of such facts focus in on the differences.

So what made the Proverbs and Job even more wise than that of the other ancient authors of their time? The book of Job presents himself and all of his friends as presenting the different near eastern perspectives on why bad things happen (theodicy). The Septuagint interpretive translation of Job makes this the most clear by mentioning them all being kings (Job 2.11 [LXX]). John Walton notes that the friends of Job were persuading him to claim that he had done something wrong to deserve the misfortune that had happened to him in accordance with ancient Near Eastern thought outside of Israel (Walton 288). Job, however, will not deny his own righteousness just to let God give him goodies again (supposing, as his friends did, that he actually would); it ends with Yahweh coming down to explain that the cosmos is far to complex for humans to run it themselves - A thought far removed (conceptually) from both Job at the time, and his friends.

The book of Proverbs places Yahweh as the source for all wisdom. It states that “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, / and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight” (New Revised Standard Version updated edition Prov. 9.10). Further, the book of Proverbs demonstrates its own theological sophistication by portraying wisdom as an extension of Yahweh, yet being Yahweh Himself (8.22-23). Proverbs personifies wisdom as being a pre-creation person (that would later be understood as Trinity) that worked with/as Yahweh in the work of creation. It is precisely because of this that Paul can so easily explain Christ as “the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1.24); the community of Jesus followers that he was writing to already had some conception of wisdom being from God and yet God Himself - An idea that no ancient Near Eastern literature paralleled.

Even some have argued that Song of Songs is wisdom literature. Roland Murphy argues that the imagery and language used to speak of wisdom at the beginning of Proverbs (chs. 1-9) is used throughout this song to speak of the Shulamite lady. In the same way, Proverbs has many mentions of an intimate embrace with wisdom, viewing it as a wife or sister, and calling it favor with God and speaking of finding it (3.13; 4.6-8; 7.4 8.17, 35; 18.22; 31.10). This is also comparable to many passages in Song of Songs that tell a narrative about the lady (not the man!) trying to find her lover and embrace him - The whole book is obviously about love and many times compares the lovers to being siblings (a Hebrew way of referring to a lover). No ancient Near Eastern text is close to as sophisticated as the Song of Songs that not only uses a romance narrative to show wisdom pursuing humanity, but even goes so far as to base that connection off of another wisdom text (Proverbs)!

Bibliography

Charlesworth, James H. The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. Vol. 2, Hendrickson Publishers, 2015. 

Longman, Tremper. How to Read Proverbs. IVP Academic, 2006. 

Murphy, Roland E. The Tree of Life: An Exploration of Biblical Wisdom Literature. William B. Eerdmans, 2002. 

New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. E-book edition, Thomas Nelson, 1989.

Walton, John H. Ancient near Eastern Thought and The Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible. Baker Academic, 2018.