St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology (Jun 2024)
Wisdom in the Old Testament
Abstract
This article takes a thematic approach to commonalities between the three main wisdom books in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible (OT/HB; sections 1–3), and then looks briefly at apocryphal and New Testament (NT) developments (section 4). The first section covers the acquisition of wisdom; its function as teaching and character formation through proverbs, instructions, and pre-scientific listing of phenomena; the beneficial goals to be gained by adherence to wisdom in relation to life and death issues; and the importance of communication as individuals and within community. The second section looks at the divine aspect of the wisdom quest, with God as creator, and the place of woman Wisdom and wisdom’s moral code of retributive justice. The third section considers the challenge to traditional wisdom perspectives and to faith in God posed by more questioning wisdom books, looking at the way individual experience contradicts traditional ideas and how retributive justice is overturned. Notions of ‘the good life’, how life is relativized in the light of death and how faith in God is maintained in the face of human suffering are explored. In section 4, the wise sayings of the apocryphal wisdom books are considered, as well as the interrelationship between divine Wisdom and the Logos of John’s Gospel in the NT. The issue of hidden sayings and belief in the afterlife are also considered. These themes all relate back to early themes from the wisdom books of the OT/HB. The conclusion focuses on contemporary relevance for the modern believer.
