Hyning

Wisdom and the Psalms 2010

Talk 1 Wisdom in the Ancient Near East

Wisdom Literature in the ANE and background to OT.

Early Mesopotamian and Egyptian culture had a profound effect on religious writings in the Ancient Near East, in particular on the Old Testament.  Wisdom Literature is a generic term and it is worth noting that it doesn’t necessary describe a uniform body of literature in the Ancient Near East.  The history of it and the influence on the Old Testament is important in understanding Wisdom literature in the OT.  What is also fascinating about Wisdom literature is the range of writings included.

From Proverbs
 “Like a dog that returns to its vomit, is a fool that returns to his folly”,
To Job’s majesty and heart searching questioning
 12-15 "And have you ever ordered Morning, 'Get up!'
   told Dawn, 'Get to work!'
So you could seize Earth like a blanket
   and shake out the wicked like cockroaches?
As the sun brings everything to light,
   brings out all the colours and shapes,
The cover of darkness is snatched from the wicked—
   they're caught in the very act! (39) 

It interests me immensely because looking at certain books in the OT; one can perceive the OT as the documents of a very nationalistic and inward looking people.   God is the God of the Chosen people who will smite their enemies etc and wipe out other nations for their sake.  Yet what’s interesting about Wisdom Literature is its universalistic nature at times.  It is much more tolerant as a body of literature precisely because of its universality I would suggest.  There is an interesting connection with certain passages of prophecy at times, particularly Jeremiah and Isaiah, but it is broader in its approach as a whole than prophetic literature because of the very different context in which the genre was developed and written over centuries. 
What I’d like to focus on during this talk is the development of Wisdom Literature in the ANE and its influence on Jewish writings, then look briefly at what books form Wisdom literature in the Hebrew Canon, the Greek Canon and if time a bit about the Deutero – Canonical books and the Pseudepigrapha.  Then, allowing for time, focussing on various themes in Wisdom tradition before looking at specific books in the second talk. 

Wisdom literature in the ANE.

Wisdom can be understood as a description of the attitude that proper conduct id based on knowledge, sometimes of a God, as in Judaism, or on practical lived experience, as in much of the ANE and the Hebrew Scriptures.  Much of the wisdom of the ANE falls into the second category.  Some of the most ancient also focuses on other aspects, e.g. magic and ritual skills.  In general there are 2 dominant themes to consider:

1. Ethical teaching and advice
2. Larger issues of life and questions of traditional beliefs

Mesopotamian literature.
There are a series of extant manuscripts/fragments, cuneiform tablets from the ANE, in particular from the Mesopotamian area.  Around the 4th millennium BC, in the Euphrates valley, 2 groups formed the basis of Mesopotamian culture; the Sumerians and the Akkadians.  The Sumerians were non-Semitic peoples who lived in the South of the region and the Northern tribes, the Akkadians who were a Semitic tribe.  The region consisted of a series of city states, ruled by a king, priest-king and/or a council of elders.  Most had their own deity and temples, in particular mud brick Ziggurats.  These cities belonged to their deity and the ruler was seen to be responsible for the running and government of the city.  The civilisation was permeated by their religious beliefs which helped to maintain order and unity.  The king represented the deity.  The Sumerians in particular developed a form of writing, cuneiform script on clay tablets. Archaeological developments over the last 2 centuries have added greatly to our understanding of these ancient cultures, in particular the discovery at Nineveh of the 7th BC library of Ashurbanipal, the king at that time. It included a variety of literature, epics, rituals, hymns, texts, laws, proverbs and in particular wisdom compositions.  Sumerian discoveries also include a collection of “school text books”, which give responses to ethical and practical suggestions.  Some of these are very similar to the questioning of Job, about the rightness of the world and divine justice or more accurately, injustice!  There are also collections of fables, myths, debates, disputations etc. The Sumerian Lexical Texts from the Temple school at Nippur contain 24 almost complete tablets with thousands of extracts as well, focussing in particular on educational and wisdom literature.   One interesting Akkadian myth focuses on the descent of Ishtar into the Nether World, a recurrent tale of death and rebirth through nature each year, it is very similar to the Osiris – Isis cycle in Egyptian thought.  Interestingly in Mesopotamian and Egyptian wisdom literature you will find a large number of epic stories but not one in Israelite thought. 

Texts in particular.
One famous Akkadian text we do know of is “Enuma Elish”, (“When on high.”) The tablets we have come from the first millennium BC but the story can be dated further into the 2nd millennium.  The story is an enactment of the myth associated with the 4th day of the 12 day New Year festival.  It’s the story of the creation of humanity and it is the story of the battle between gods in Mesopotamia. There were originally the main gods, Apsu and Tiamat. The lesser gods wanted more rights and wouldn’t serve some of the older gods.  Tiamat sided with the younger gods, Anu, Enlil and Ea against her husband.  Ea defeats Apsu but there is another battle then between Tiamat and the young god Marduk.  There is a struggle and Tiamat is destroyed by Marduk.  The universe is formed from the remains of her body and humanity is a by product of this creation, not the pinnacle as in Genesis.  Humanity was made to serve in bondage and do the duties the lesser gods would not do. 

Another is the “Epic of Gilgamesh”, Gilgamesh is the hero king of the city state of Uruk. It was written in Akkadian but it has been also been found in early Sumerian texts and the story seems to have been around from the 3rd millennium BC.  Gilgamesh is a story of transformation, of human struggle v death and reflects the profound pessimism of Mesopotamian culture.  This pessimistic world view would have an immense effect on pessimistic literature found in the ANE and seen in the OT in Ecclesiastes in particular.  Life was uncertain, death was the only certainty and this fear of death seems to have penetrated the psyche of the Mesopotamia.  (Read out the quote from the advice of the divine inn keeper, Siduri, to the hero, Gilgamesh.)
O Gilgamesh, where are you wandering?
You cannot find the life that you seek:
When the gods created mankind,
For mankind they established death,
Life they kept for themselves.
You, Gilgamesh, let your belly be full,
Keep enjoying yourself, day and night!
Every day make merry,
Dance and play day and night!
Let your clothes be clean!
Let your head be washed, may you be bathed in water!
Gaze on the little one who holds your hand,
Let a wife enjoy your repeated embrace!
Such is the destiny [of mortal men,] (…)
She advises Gilgamesh to be content with the span of human life and accept death as part of life.  He defies the advice of Siduri and wants immortality.  The journey changes him totally and he eventually comes to accept the limits of life through his friendship with Enkidu and his experience on the journey.  He returns to Uruk a profounder and wiser man.  This is implied in the prologue of one version of the tablets.
He who saw the Deep, the country’s foundations,
Who knew everything, was wise in all matters! (…)
He learnt the sum of wisdom of everything.
He saw what was secret, discovered what was hidden,
He brought back a message from before the flood .
The story is an exploration of what it means to be human and charts the progress of Gilgamesh’s journey from cruelty, his experience with the wild innocence of Enkidu and the immortal life of Utnapishtim.  The message is very clear; to be human is to have limitations, to live within the law, the culture and to accept the inevitability of death without complaint.   It is suggested as one of the sources for the Genesis stories of Noah. 

The other important text associated with Mesopotamia is the Code of Hammurabi.  It was one of 4 ancient legal codes found in the excavations of Nineveh, and one nearly complete example of the Code survives today, inscribed on a seven foot, four inch tall diorite (grey stone) stele in the Akkadian cuneiform script. The law dates from the time of the Babylon king Hammurabi, c.1728 – 1686 BC.  It shows the king receiving the law from the god of justice, Shamash.  It would have an important influence in the role kings in the ANE and can be seen in Israelite theology also where the king represents the law of the Lord. 
“When Anu the Sublime, King of the Anunaki, and Bel, the lord of Heaven and earth, who decreed the fate of the land, assigned to Marduk, the over-ruling son of Ea, God of righteousness, dominion over earthly man, and made him great among the Igigi, they called Babylon by his illustrious name, made it great on earth, and founded an everlasting kingdom in it, whose foundations are laid so solidly as those of heaven and earth; then Anu and Bel called by name me, Hammurabi, the exalted prince, who feared God, to bring about the rule of righteousness in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil-doers; so that the strong should not harm the weak; so that I should rule over the black-headed people like Shamash, and enlighten the land, to further the well-being of mankind.”
There are 282 laws in the Code of Hammurabi, each usually no more than a sentence or two. The 282 laws are introduced by a Prologue in which Hammurabi introduces himself, and an Epilogue in which he affirms his authority and sets forth his hopes and prayers for his code of laws.  As well as the similarity to some of the Israelite laws, especially Exodus 21 – 23, chapters 9 and 11 of Isaiah show a resemblance to its idea of a Messianic king.  (Earlier collections of laws include the Code of Ur-Nammu, king of Ur (ca. 2050 BC), the Laws of Eshnunna ca. 1930 BC and the codex of Lipit-Ishtar of Isin ca. 1870 BC.)

Types of Wisdom literature in Mesopotamia     
A range of genre can be found written in both Sumerian and Akkadian.  It is possible that the Sumerian texts are the older of the two.  Basically we can divide Wisdom literature into the following areas:

1. Instructions – The father to son convention that we are so familiar with in the OT is found in the earliest Sumerian work we are aware of.  It is used in the address to the hero of the flood, Ziusudra, by his father, Shuruppak.  It was translated into Akkadian but not much survives.  Another similar type is the “Counsels of Wisdom”, an Akkadian instruction with the same format.  One of the most well known of Akkadian tales was the instruction of Ahikar, a royal seal bearer but we only have the text in Aramaic, found amongst 5th century papyri in Egypt.  It is very similar to Proverbs 23:13 – 14 (find text if possible.)  These instructions also transmitted ethical teachings and followed a similar convention.
2. Proverb collections – Mesopotamian scribes drew up anthologies of proverbs, often using mnemonic devices.  The earliest were in Sumerian and eventually were compiled in Akkadian as well.  Some fragments still exist in Akkadian.
3. Scribal literature – These were texts dealing with scribal schools, very similar to the schools of Egypt. They were almost like “textbooks” that were copied with lists of nature, cities, animals, rudimentary forms of maps etc. 
4. Theodicy literature – The questioning of divine judgement was not part of Egyptian writings but was very much part of Mesopotamia literature.  I think there is one example that I can think of, the Ancient Egyptian "Book of the Heavenly Cow" which describes the reasons for the imperfect state of the world in terms of humankind's rebellion against the supreme sun god Ra.  Mesopotamian literature attributes the suffering in the world to a rupture in humankind's relationship with the divine due to wrongdoing. One of the best examples of this is the Sumerian work, “Man and his God”.  Humanity finds salvation in submitting to the will of the deity.  The Akkadian poem “I will praise the Lord of Wisdom” was very popular judging by the number of mss fragments remaining.  Composed somewhere between 1500 and 1200 BC, it is a monologue of a nobleman’s woes until saved by the god Marduk.  Though some of the sources I have referred will bring to mind the ideas in the book of Job, the one that is most closely associated with it is the “Babylonian Theodicy”, a dialogue of 2 friends debating the suffering of the just. 
5. Pessimistic literature – Common examples of this are not known but the one most referred to is the “Dialogue of Pessimism”, a colloquy between a man and his slave.  Death is the only solution to life!

“Slave, listen to me,” “Yes, master, yes.” “Then what is good?” “To have my neck and yours broken and to be thrown into the river. Who is so tall that he can reach to the heavens? Who is so broad that he can encompass the underworld?” “No, servant, I will kill you and let you go first.” “Then (I swear that) my master will not outlive me by even three days.”

1. Fables and debates – Sumerian tradition is very strong on these areas.  Animals, plants were given the power of speech and engaged in dialogue with each other.  7 texts are still extant in Sumerian and also in Akkadian. Fables have a broader concept than in Egyptian and Israelite thought.  There is a lovely fable called Lugalbanda and the Anzud bird and several fables can be found online fairly easily.  http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.1.8.2.2#

Egyptian Wisdom Literature  
Egyptian civilisation was very different from Mesopotamian and developed along the river valley of the Upper and Lower Nile.  It wasn’t a kingdom of walled cities but mainly rural with the Nile as the life blood of the Upper and Lower Egypt.  It was ruled by the pharaohs, men who thought they were gods made incarnate.  The Kingdoms of Egypt are dated roughly as follows:

1. Predynastic 3500 – 3100 BC
2. Early Kingdom 3100 – 2700 BC
3. Old Kingdom 2700 – 2200 BC
4. Middle Kingdom 2052 – 1768 BC
5. New Kingdom 157 5 – 1087 BC

Between each major kingdom are the intermediate periods where Egypt suffered periods of decline or uncertainty

One of the most important aspects of Egyptian wisdom literature is the concept of ‘Ma’at, for the Egyptian believed that the universe was above everything else an ordered and rational place. It functioned with predictability and regularity; the cycles of the universe always remained constant; in the moral sphere, purity was rewarded and sin was punished. Both morally and physically, the universe was in perfect balance. It was the universal order of the universe and wisdom’s great goal was to establish this order.  The wise men of Egypt were faithful transmitters of this concept, there was no exception, and even the pharaohs were subject to it.  Egypt, then, was seen to be nothing without Ma'at.  Ma'at was reality, the solid grounding of reality that made the Sun rise, the stars shine, the river flood and humanity think.  A person trained in the tradition of ‘Ma’at was seen to be restrained and thoughtful, and they were wise in the transmission of teaching, instruction and disputation.  It was the pharaohs' duty to uphold ma'at. "I have done Ma'at" was an expression spoken by several pharaohs, as well as being called "beloved of Ma'at". Many texts, which were believed to be issued from the deities themselves, have been preserved and handed down throughout the centuries, showing us that morale codes and ethical behaviour was taught to young people, and that one's behaviour in this life had a direct influence on life in the hereafter.  These sources are called the Instructions, or Wisdom Literature.  Like in the Mesopotamian tradition, they usually take the form of an elder teaching a young son or future king how to behave and conduct himself in order to be successful and gain esteem in society.  The origins of the 'Instructions' go back to the Old Kingdom although many of them exist on papyri from the New Kingdom only.  They were frequently copied by schoolboys on ostraca, pieces of pottery or stone, for several reasons; partly for the instructions themselves, partly for the exercise of style and writing.  The values taught to young people instructed them how to live a life in accordance with Ma´at and to interact with other people on all levels of society while taking into consideration, experience, so that continuity, safety and success would be ensured.  Thus right living was achieved and Ma´at upheld, which ensured life after death.  Ma’at became personified as a goddess and her cult was very popular throughout Egyptian history.  This concept was central to Egyptian identity.  If you have ever seen the film “The Prince of Egypt”, an animated story about the life of Moses, there is a superb portrayal of this in the life of Rameses, the pharaoh, Moses’ childhood friend and enemy and his struggle to preserve the traditions of Egypt at any cost.
 
Texts in particular
There are three main sources that stem from the Old Kingdom; the 'Instructions of Ptah-Hotep', the 'Instructions to Kagemni', and the 'Instructions of Duauf', also called the 'Instructions of Kehety' or the 'Satire on Trades'.  This is an extract from the Instructions of Ptah-Hotep', 4 copies of which remain dating from the Middle and New Kingdoms, but the original seems to be dated back to the Old Kingdom. 
“If a man's son accepts his father's words
No plan of his will go wrong
Teach your son to be a hearer,
One who will be valued by the nobles
One who guides his speech by what he was told,
One regarded as a hearer.
Another interesting one is the 'The Satire on Trades'. Supposedly written by Duauf, son of Khety and a man of low birth, he advises his son Pepi who has had the good luck to be placed in school along with children of the magistrates.  Therefore, his father tries to ensure that the boy will take advantage of the teachings and become a scribe so he doesn't have to work in the various trades.  Duauf describes the various trades and their toils, and glorifies the scribe's profession to make Pepy pursue this career.

In the wisdom literature of the time, ethical conduct and moderation, respect for authority and kindness for those who are lower than oneself, bring about personal attainment, which in its turn leads to contentment.  The standards for 'right living' were thus already set as a way to uphold the balance and justice of all things, high and low.

There is also the Instruction of Meri – ka –re, which continued the Old Kingdom genre of the instruction into the Middle Kingdom.  The Old Kingdom was a time of prosperity and stability.  This formed an optimistic outlook where a person could advance, increase in material well-being by practical pursuit of wisdom.  The collapse of the Old Kingdom led to a questioning of ideas and a deepening of morality during the following dynasties and into the Middle Kingdom.  Written about 2200 – 2052 BC, the Instruction for Merikare gives a twist to the old formula: this is a royal instruction, from a king to his son.  Rather than simply providing guidelines on how to live a life according to the precepts of justice, temperance, and proper action, one finds here the addition of how to rule while practicing these virtues.  There are similarities to prophetic writings in the 7th and 8th century where they exhorted the king to live justly as well.  There is also a more developed view of the Afterlife that the Israelites took until the 2nd century BC to develop. 

One of my favourite periods of Egyptian is the Amarna period, the time of the heretical pharaoh Akhenaten.  During this time the “Hymn to the Aten” was written.  Akhenaton had abolished the worship of the old gods and replaced it with the worship of the sun disc, the Aten.  This was written during the New Kingdom, another time of prosperity and relative peace for Egypt.  The chief God had been Amun Re, the combination of Amun, the hidden one and Ra, the sun god.  The cult of Amun Re was incredibly powerful throughout Egypt’s history and there was a reaction to their power when Akhenaton moved the capital city to Amarna.  There was a greater universality in Egypt at this time and the change in the art of this period is amazing also.  It has been noted how similar parts of Psalm 104 are to this hymn.  There are a few possibilities for how this might have come about.  It is fairly certain that, even before the time of Moses, fleeing slaves in groups of various sizes, had wondered into the Sinai Peninsula.  As the emigrants moved, they took with the traditions they had left behind, including songs and prayers.  One of the songs they sang may have been Akhenaten’s hymn to the Sun. Oral tradition could have incorporated elements of his hymn over the centuries that followed.  There is an interesting website that highlights some of the similarities. Hymn to the Aten

Types of Wisdom literature in Egypt

I have already gone through the main types of Wisdom literature in Mesopotamia and I’ll do the same for Egypt but I may have to be more succinct this time!
They include:

1. Instructions – didactic treatises used for the edification of the young, especially in the schools of scribal service.  The same convention of father – son was used and again they were more formal that some of their Mesopotamian counterparts.  I’ve already referred to some of them such as the Instruction of Ptah- Hotep.  They also tended to contain more propaganda as Egypt developed and grew after the Old Kingdom.  By the time of the New Kingdom, they became more pious.  The “Wisdom of Amen-em-opet” written in 1200 BC has been preserved in its entirety and can be seen as a source for Proverbs 22:17 – 24:22 as well as Jeremiah 17:5- 8 amongst others.    The work reflects on the inner qualities, attitudes, and behaviors required for a happy life in the face of increasingly difficult social and economic circumstances.  It is widely regarded as one of the masterpieces of ancient near-eastern wisdom literature and has been of particular interest to modern scholars because of its relationship to Proverbs.  Slide 21

(Proverbs 22:20): "Have I not written for you thirty sayings of counsel and knowledge?" (ESV)
(Amenemopet, ch. 30, line 539): "Look to these thirty chapters; they inform, they educate."

It distinguishes between the “silent” man and the “heated” man, and the qualities of each.  Egyptian influence on Israel was particularly strong in the reigns of Solomon and Hezekiah during Egypt's Third Intermediate Period, and as a result, "Hebrew literature is permeated with concepts and figures derived from the didactic treatises of Egypt", with Amenemopet referred to as the foremost example.

1. Scribal literature – One of the most popular of this form was the text referred to earlier, the text on the Satire of the Trades.  Dating from the 12th Dynasty, as well as being an instruction it developed a new lietrary genre, irony and it led to a spate of imitations, including some influence centuries later on Ecclesiasticus: 38:24 – 39:11. The New Kingdom also had anthologies and compilations of practical advice collected by the scribes, whose influence can also be seen on lists in Job 38 – 39 and some verses in Proverbs 30, and even the creation account in Genesis 1. 
2. Pessimistic literature – This really developed from the 12th Dynasty onwards.  Several works at this time expressed despondency over the chaotic state of the land.  The most famous being “The Dialogue of a man with his Soul”. We do not have a complete translation and it dates from the first intermediate period, a time of instability and questions always seem to arise during times of upheaval but like Job it deals with the idea of theodicy and the suffering of innocent people.  The soul in Egyptian thought was the ba, the part of a person free to move about after the death of the body.  In this text, the ba tries to persuade the man to enjoy life rather than commit suicide and they exchange reflections on life and death in the process.   However we don’t know what the final answer was!
3. Discourses – A well known one is a pleas for social justice, a Middle Kingdom text called “Tale of an Eloquent Peasant” written after the collapse of the Old Kingdom.  Several others followed during the course of the dynasties and were more light-hearted than this poetical piece of writing. 
4. Fables – Fables were very rare in Egyptian literature and come much later, from the time of the New Kingdom though. One of interest is the allegorical take of 2 brothers who personified the qualities of Wisdom and Folly. 

Wisdom in Israel 
After referring to the similarities between the certain texts it seems obvious to state then that there was a profound influence on Israel by the wisdom writings of the ANE. 

There were:

1. Common questions approached: the problem of sufferings, successful living
2. Common needs: the instruction of the young, of administrators
3. There was enough 'common ground' between the various nations that comparisons could be made: e.g. Solomon's wisdom was greater than the wisdom of all the men of the East, and greater than all the wisdom of Egypt. He was wiser than any other man, including Ethan the Ezrahite -- wiser than Heman, Calcol and Darda, the sons of Mahol. (I Kgs 4:30-31)
4. Similarities of style and because of the common needs and grounds etc., a universalism in the application of practical wisdom and guidelines and a common reference to the influence of the deity. 

There are of course profound differences as you would expect from lived experiences and differing belief systems; the main being the particular association with Yahwehism as a theological system.  For the Jews, “the fear of the Lord”, was the real beginning of wisdom. 

What is interesting is such a diversity of types of literature coming together to be classed as wisdom and the while process of the canon of wisdom literature developing in the Hebrew Scriptures.  Time won’t allow me to go into the detail I had wanted to when preparing the talk as I was getting carried away with the texts so much!  I’d just like to refer briefly to 2 types of books, texts that can be classed under the whole are of wisdom literature in the Judeao – Christian tradition and explain them briefly:

1. Pseudepigrapha - http://www.pseudepigrapha.com/
2. Apocrypha

If you look at the Canon of the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Scriptures, there is a gap of perhaps 2 hundred years between the end of one and the beginning of the other.  There are many works in between and a difference between the Greek version of the OT and the Hebrew.  The Hebrew Canon was chosen at Jamnia, in approximately 95 AD.   The Jews rejected the Christian books, many writings associated with the prophets and patriarchs and books written in Greek such as Ecclesiasticus.  There are early manuscripts that show a variation from early canons such as the manuscripts from the Ethiopian church which included the book of Enoch.  The legend developed over the formation of the Septuagint, the Greek version, associated with Alexandria in the time of Ptolemy II Philodelphus.  The Septuagint, comes from the Latin word for "seventy," which can be a misleading, since it ideally refers to the third-century BCE Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, in Alexandria, Egypt.  The full story behind the translation and the various stages, amplifications, and modifications to the collection we now call the Septuagint is complicated.  Over the course of the three centuries following Ptolemy's project, however, other books of the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek. It is not altogether clear which book was translated when, and in what locale and so the Jewish authorities rejected and some Christians accepted them.   In some manuscripts of the Vulgate you will find the books of 2 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh as they were translated by St. Jerome as well. 

Pseudepigrapha
The name means “with false subscription”, it is given to a piece of work that was written with an assumed name from the past and is especially applied to books of Judeao – Christian origin.  I didn’t realise there were so many when I started reading them.  The writings are said to be the work of ancient patriarchs and prophets, but are, in their present form, mainly dated from about 200 B.C. to A.D. 200.  These writings have at times been popular with some branches of Christianity, but by their very nature there is no accepted fixed limit to the number of writings that are called pseudepigrapha, for what one person or group regards as canon another may call pseudepigrapha.  Some of the writings originated in Palestine and were written in Hebrew or Aramaic; others originated in North Africa and were written in Coptic Greek and Ethiopic.  These include legends about biblical characters, hymns, psalms, and apocalypses.  Books associated to Enoch, Moses, and Isaiah are fairly prominent.  Although not canonized nor accepted as scripture, the pseudepigrapha are useful in showing various concepts and beliefs held by ancient peoples in the Middle East they can demonstrates that there is an occasional glimmer of historical accuracy in those ancient writings.    Some of the writings known as pseudepigrapha belong in the area of apocalyptic literature as well but that would be a whole new topic!   I just carried away when looking at the areas associated with this topic! 

Apocryphal
The word can basically refer to Greek translations of Hebrew books, not included in the Hebrew Scriptures, The Hebrew canon is understood to be in 3 sections: the law, the writings and the prophets.  These divisions were seen as early as the 2nd century BC and can be found in the book of Wisdom!   In the canon of the Hebrew Scriptures only Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Job are classed as Wisdom literature with the Psalms being associated also.  The Songs of Songs is also included but there was a long history of debate about its inclusion and strictly speaking it belongs to the writings section.  In the Greek canon, the books of Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) are included as part of Wisdom literature.  St. Jerome included them in his translation of the Septuagint, known as the Vulgate.  At the Council of Trent, this version was recognised definitively as the RC version but reference was made to the disputed books as Deutero-canonical over the centuries.  The Protestant canons included some books only as apocryphal, and some versions of the Biblical books are slightly different depending on which manuscript they depend on.  The Greek Church I think has differences also and they refer to some of these books as, “Anagignoskomena”, “things that are read”.  I am not an expert on all the different texts but I think the main differences are the inclusion or exclusion of Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, and 1 and 2 Maccabees, Ecclesiasticus, and parts of Daniel and Esther.   

Types of Wisdom in the OT.
It is important to note that Israel’s wisdom tradition, though heavily influenced by the ANE, has to be understood in the context of a covenanted people.  It was associated with Solomon and the royal court, the development of politics and the organisation of officialdom on one level and then alongside was popular wisdom.   Wisdom literature was formed from a variety of sources:

1. Clan wisdom – seeking to master life, using proverbial sayings
2. Courtly wisdom – seeks to educate a select group using didactic methods in its pedagogy
3. Scribal wisdom – more open than courtly wisdom, using dialogue and admonition.
4. Nature wisdom – interpreting reality for the sake of human survival using lists and compilations.

It’s not possible to do justice to the use of the word wisdom in the OT, hākam, in Hebrew and Sophia, sophōs, in Greek but it has a range of meanings:

1.  The ability of crafts – Exodus 31:3
2. Art of government – Jeremiah 50:35
3. Magic/divination – 2 Samuel 13:3, Job 5:13

In the 8th and 7th centuries there was a shift away from more governmental wisdom to a wider sense of a sage or wise man.  Postexilic wisdom developed this idea further with the idea of wisdom teachers; perhaps Job’s friends fell into this sort of category.  Humanity’s welfare is the goal of the wisdom tradition, a practical approach arising from the religious conviction about the order of the universe, the practical art of succeeding in life, knowledge of the law, based within the experience transmitted within the family, communal and scribal traditions. 

The reality is that its usage is linked with practical advice and divine wisdom!   What I will focus on next time are the general themes of OT Wisdom literature and look at some of the specific books.