ABSTRACT

A term used by modern scholars to describe the books of Job, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, together with a few so-called 'wisdom psalms'. Until modern times, in both Jewish and Christian exegesis, the wisdom books were generally used as a source of moral and religious instruction. Early Israelite wisdom was held to be an essentially pagan phenomenon, the possession of a small upper class whose way of life had little to do with traditional Yahwism. The understanding of ot literature was put on an entirely new basis with the discovery, from the nineteenth century onwards, of the previously unknown extensive literature of the peoples of the Ancient Near East. In the field of wisdom literature as in other fields, it became clear for the first time that Israel was neither unique nor a pioneer. It is now recognized that Egyptian wisdom literature is far from being amoral or non-religious.