• The Nineteenth-Century Beginnings of ‘Wisdom Literature’, and Its Twenty-first-Century End?

    Author(s):
    Will Kynes (see profile)
    Date:
    2015
    Subject(s):
    Wisdom literature, Bible. Old Testament, Biblical interpretation, History
    Item Type:
    Book chapter
    Tag(s):
    Biblical Wisdom literature, Hebrew bible, Old Testament, History of biblical interpretation
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/g3eh-fp31
    Abstract:
    This article unearths the origins of the "Wisdom Literature" category in nineteenth-century German biblical scholarship, identifying Johann Bruch, in his work Weisheits-Lehre der Hebräer, as the "Wellhausen of Wisdom." It then demonstrates the distorting effect that the projection of the post-Enlightenment interests of scholars in that time and place have had on the interpretation of the texts within the category, such that they are isolated from the rest of the canon and considered the "universalistic, humani[sti]c, philosophical" collection within the Old Testament, as Delitzsch put it at the time. Finally, it proposes an alternative interpretive approach to the texts that discards the "Wisdom" classification in order to reintegrate them intertextually with the wider canon and develop a broader understanding of the wisdom they describe.
    Metadata:
    xml
    Published as:
    Book chapter     Show details
    Pub. DOI:
    10.5040/9780567663191.0011
    Publisher:
    Bloomsbury T&T Clark
    Pub. Date:
    2015-12-22
    Book Title:
    Perspectives on Israelite Wisdom: Proceedings of the Oxford Old Testament Seminar
    Author/Editor:
    Edited by John Jarick
    Page Range:
    83 - 108
    ISBN:
    9780567663191
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    3 years ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved

    Downloads

    Item Name: pdf the_nineteenth-century_beginnings_of_wi-1.pdf
      Download View in browser
    Activity: Downloads: 1388

    Back to Deposits