The Book of Proverbs is a book in the third section of the Hebrew Bible and a book of the Christian Old Testament. When translated into Greek and Latin, the title took on different forms: in the Greek Septuagint (LXX) it became Παροιμίαι ; in the Latin Vulgate the title was Proverbia, from which the English name is derived.
Biblical studies is the academic application of a set of diverse disciplines to the study of the Bible. For its theory and methods, the field draws on disciplines ranging from ancient history, historical criticism, philology, theology, textual criticism, literary criticism, historical backgrounds, mythology, and comparative religion.
Amenemope, the son of Kanakht, is the ostensible author of the Instruction of Amenemope, an Egyptian wisdom text written in the Ramesside Period. He is portrayed as a scribe and sage who lived in Egypt during the 20th Dynasty of the New Kingdom and resided in Akhmim, the capital of the ninth nome of Upper Egypt. His discourses are presented in the traditional form of instructions from father to son on how to live a good and moral life, but they are explicitly organized into 30 numbered chapters.
Wisdom literature is a genre of literature common in the ancient Near East. It consists of statements by sages and the wise that offer teachings about divinity and virtue. Although this genre uses techniques of traditional oral storytelling, it was disseminated in written form.
Proverbs 31 is the 31st and final chapter of the Book of Proverbs in the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. Verses 1 to 9 present the advice which King Lemuel's mother gave to him, about how a just king should reign. The remaining verses detail the attributes of a good wife or an ideal woman. The latter section is also known as Eshet Ḥayil.
Harold William Attridge is an American New Testament scholar and historian of Christianity known for his work in New Testament exegesis, especially the Epistle to the Hebrews, the study of Hellenistic Judaism, and the history of early Christianity. He is a Sterling Professor of Divinity at Yale University, where he served as Dean of the Divinity School from 2002 to 2012, the first Roman Catholic to head that historically Protestant school.
Harold C. Washington is the professor of Hebrew Bible at Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, Missouri. He holds both M.Div. and Ph.D. degrees from Princeton Theological Seminary. He is a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). Washington's professional output is considerable. Perhaps most significantly, he contributed the introduction and annotations for the books of Proverbs and Sirach in the third edition of The New Oxford Annotated Bible NRSV.
Carole R. Fontaine is an internationally recognized American biblical scholar. She is the John Taylor professor of biblical theology and history at the Andover Newton Theological School and feminist author of six books and over 100 articles, in addition to serving on several editorial boards. She has written extensively on feminist theological topics, including disability, and is an expert in wisdom traditions and women in the ancient Near East.
There is no scholarly consensus as to when the canon of the Hebrew Bible was fixed. Rabbinic Judaism recognizes the twenty-four books of the Masoretic Text as the authoritative version of the Tanakh. Of these books, the Book of Daniel has the most recent final date of composition. The canon was therefore fixed at some time after this date. Some scholars argue that it was fixed during the Hasmonean dynasty, while others argue it was not fixed until the second century CE or even later.
Mark Stratton John Matthew Smith is an American Old Testament scholar and professor.
The Book of Sirach, also known as The Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach or Ecclesiasticus is a Jewish work, originally written in Biblical Hebrew. The longest extant wisdom book from antiquity, it consists of ethical teachings, written approximately between 196 and 175 BCE by Yeshua ben Eleazar ben Sira, a Hellenistic Jewish scribe of the Second Temple period.
John J. Collins is an Irish-born American biblical scholar, the Holmes Professor of Old Testament Criticism and Interpretation at Yale Divinity School. He is noted for his research in the Hebrew Bible, as well as the apocryphal works of the Second Temple period including the sectarian works found in Dead Sea Scrolls and their relation to Christian origins. Collins has published and edited over 300 scholarly works, and a number of popular level articles and books. Among his best known works are the Between Athens and Jerusalem: Jewish Identity in the Hellenistic Diaspora ; Daniel in the Hermeneia commentary series ; The Scepter and the Star. The Messiahs of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Ancient Literature ; and The Bible after Babel: Historical Criticism in a Postmodern Age.
The personification of wisdom, typically as a righteous woman, is a motif found in religious and philosophical texts, most notably in the Book of Proverbs in the Hebrew Bible and other Jewish and Christian texts.
James L. Crenshaw is the Robert L. Flowers Professor of the Old Testament at Duke University Divinity School. He is one of the world’s leading scholars in Old Testament Wisdom literature. He proposes that much of Proverbs was brought together at a time well after Solomon. He has been described as "a highly respected scholar" and an "excellent teacher".
Michael V. Fox is an American biblical scholar. He is a Halls-Bascom Professor Emeritus in the Department of Hebrew and Semitic Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Fox has been described as a "highly regarded authority on biblical wisdom literature."
Leo G. Perdue (1946-2017) was "one of the leading international scholars in the field of biblical wisdom" and "Dean and Professor of Hebrew Bible at Brite Divinity School", Fort Worth, Texas and editor for The Library of Biblical Theology at Abingdon Press and Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht's Library of Wisdom.
Choon-Leong Seow, known as C. L. Seow, is a distinguished biblical scholar, semitist, epigrapher, and historian of Near Eastern religion, currently as Vanderbilt, Buffington, Cupples Chair in Divinity and Distinguished Professor of Hebrew Bible at Vanderbilt University. An expert in wisdom literature, Seow has written widely in the field of biblical studies.
Carol Ann Newsom is an American biblical scholar, historian of ancient Judaism, and literary critic. She is the Charles Howard Candler Professor Emerita of Old Testament at the Candler School of Theology and a former senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University. She is a leading expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Wisdom literature, and the Book of Daniel.
A graded numerical sequence or numerical proverb, sometimes called an n/n+1 saying or numerical heightening, is a literary form employed in the Hebrew Bible. It is found especially in Proverbs, Job, and Amos, and is used to list attributes, compare items, and catalogue sins. 38 biblical examples have been identified, as well as in the Book of Sirach. Franz Delitzsch notes "this peculiarity: ... that the number named in the first parallel line is in the second increased by one".
Proverbs 9 is the ninth chapter of the Book of Proverbs in the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. The book is a compilation of several wisdom literature collections, with the heading in 1:1 may be intended to regard Solomon as the traditional author of the whole book, but the dates of the individual collections are difficult to determine, and the book probably obtained its final shape in the post-exilic period. This chapter is a part of the first collection of the book.
