ABSTRACT
In spite of the hermeneutical developments of the recent decades, scholars, with some notable recent exceptions, have neglected the book of Proverbs. This is surprising in view of some of the book’s striking features, particularly its wit and the delight in paradoxes and incongruities evident in many of its sayings. Another characteristic – the fact that some of its sayings appear to contradict others – is sometimes seen as an indication of the flawed, random nature of this text’s construction. This chapter begins the investigation of another possibility, that these contradictions are not imperfections but part of a subtle and profound didactic strategy to awaken the critical faculties of the reader. The methodological insights of the Russian Formalists, Shklovsky and Bakhtin suggest that the contradictions in Proverbs could be important elements in an ‘heteroglossalic’, dialogical text. Hinds’s view of the book offers an important insight into the way such contradictions might function in ‘teaching for responsibility’.
