While endorsing the overall project of this volume, I raise in this essay two significant questions about how this relationship between Wisdom and Prophecy should be explored. First, is the term “Wisdom” as a designation for a category of biblical books more of a hindrance than a help? Von Rad first asked this question in 1970, as he wondered whe…[Read more]

Focusing on Lamentations 3, the “theological heart” of the book (O’Connor 2002), and the chapter with closest parallels to the book of Job, this paper will explore how the “voices” in Lamentations correspond to the characters in Job’s dialogue. The close connections between the two books, which have previously been surprisingly overlooked…[Read more]

The disconnect between the depiction of Solomon in 1 Kings 1–11 and the more “enlightened” wisdom attributed to him in Proverbs has long been a source of scholarly discomfort. Therefore, though many, like R. B. Y. Scott (1960), may recognize that there are several types of wisdom in the Solomonic account, including political, legal, and even culti…[Read more]

This article identifies dialogical interpretation in Job as a form of aggadic inner-biblical exegesis. Job and the friends frequently attack each other through allusions to each other’s words. This interpretive dispute spreads into their allusions to other texts, which are drawn into the dialogue and caught up in the conflict. Job and the f…[Read more]

A chapter-length commentary on the book of Proverbs, which focuses on the book’s thoroughly intertextual nature and includes a discussion of its history of interpretation.

This chapter introduces the volume by arguing that the study of biblical wisdom is in the midst of a potential paradigm shift, as interpreters are beginning to reconsider the relationship between the concept of wisdom in the Bible and the category Wisdom Literature. This offers an opportunity to explore how the two have been related in the past,…[Read more]

The consensus that Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job are the primary members of a ‘Wisdom’ collection is nearly universal, though the category’s origin is unknown and its definition debated. This article identifies that origin and argues that it has caused that continuing debate. Wisdom was not born in early Jewish and Christian inter…[Read more]