Wisdom literature

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Tablet of the Dialogue between a Man and His God, c. 19th-17th centuries BC, Louvre Lens - Inauguration du Louvre-Lens le 4 decembre 2012, la Galerie du Temps, ndeg 018.JPG
Tablet of the Dialogue between a Man and His God , c. 19th–17th centuries BC, Louvre

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.

Contents

The earliest known wisdom literature dates back to the middle of the 3rd millennium BC, originating from ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. These regions continued to produce wisdom literature over the subsequent two and a half millennia. Wisdom literature from Jewish, Greek, Chinese, and Indian cultures started appearing around the middle of the 1st millennium BC. In the 1st millennium AD, Egyptian-Greek wisdom literature emerged, some elements of which were later incorporated into Islamic thought.

Much of wisdom literature can be broadly categorized into two types - conservative "positive wisdom" and critical "negative wisdom" or "vanity literature": [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Another common genre is existential works that deal with the relationship between man and God, divine reward and punishment, theodicy, the problem of evil, and why bad things happen to good people. The protagonist is a "just sufferer" - a good person beset by tragedy, who tries to understand his lot in life. The most well known example is the Book of Job, however it was preceded by, and likely based on, earlier Mesopotamian works such as The Babylonian Theodicy (sometimes called The Babylonian Job), Ludlul bēl nēmeqi ("I Will Praise the Lord of Wisdom" or "The Poem of the Righteous Sufferer"), Dialogue between a Man and His God , and the Sumerian Man and His God. [5]

The literary genre of mirrors for princes, which has a long history in Islamic and Western Renaissance literature, is a secular cognate of wisdom literature. In classical antiquity, the didactic poetry of Hesiod, particularly his Works and Days , was regarded as a source of knowledge similar to the wisdom literature of Egypt, Babylonia and Israel.[ citation needed ] Pre-Islamic poetry is replete with many poems of wisdom, including the poetry of Zuhayr bin Abī Sūlmā (520–609).

Ancient Mesopotamian literature

The wisdom literature from Sumer and Babylonia is among the most ancient in the world, with the Sumerian documents dating back to the third millennium BC and the Babylonian dating to the second millennium BC. Many of the extant texts uncovered at Nippur are as ancient as the 18th century BC. Most of these texts are wisdom in the form of dialogues or hymns, such as the Hymn to Enlil, the All-Beneficent from ancient Sumer. [6]

Proverbs were particularly popular among the Sumerians, with many fables and anecdotes therein, such as the Debate Between Winter and Summer , which Assyriologist Samuel Noah Kramer has noted as paralleling the story of Cain and Abel in the Book of Genesis (Genesis 4:1–16) [7] and the form of disputation is similar to that between Job and his friends in the Book of Job (written c. 6th century BC). [8]

My lord, I have reflected within my reins, [...] in [my] heart. I do not know what sin I have committed. Have I [eaten] a very evil forbidden fruit? Does brother look down on brother? — Dialogue between a Man and His God , c. 19th–16th centuries BC [9]

Several other ancient Mesopotamian texts parallel the Book of Job, including the Sumerian Man and his God (remade by the Old Babylonians into Dialogue between a Man and His God , c. 19th–16th centuries BC) and the Akkadian text, The Poem of the Righteous Sufferer; [10] the latter text concerns a man who has been faithful his whole life and yet suffers unjustly until he is ultimately delivered from his afflictions. [11] The ancient poem known as the Babylonian Theodicy from 17th to 10th centuries BC also features a dialogue between a sufferer and his friend on the unrighteousness of the world. [12]

The 5th-century BC Aramaic story Words of Ahikar is full of sayings and proverbs, many similar to local Babylonian and Persian aphorisms as well as passages similar to parts of the Book of Proverbs and others to the deuterocanonical Wisdom of Sirach . [13]

Notable examples

Instructions of Shuruppak [14] (mid-3rd millennium BC, Sumer): The oldest/earliest known wisdom literature, [5] [15] [1] as well as one of the longest-lived, [5] and most widely disseminated in Mesopotamia. [16] It presents advice from a father (Shuruppak) to his son (Ziusudra) on various aspects of life, from personal conduct to social relations. The Instructions contain precepts that reflect those later included in the Ten Commandments, [17] and other sayings that are reflected in the biblical Book of Proverbs. [14]

The Counsels of Wisdom (AKA "Teachings of the Sages"): A 150 line compilation of Sumerian and Akkadian proverbs that cover a variety of topics, including ethical conduct and wisdom. Specific topics include: what kind of company to keep, conflict avoidance and diffusion, importance of propriety in speech, the reward of personal piety, etc.. [18]

The Instructions of Ur-Ninurta (early-2nd millennium BC): Includes two wisdom sections - “the instructions of the god” and “the instructions of the farmer”. The “instructions of the god” recommend proper religious and moral behavior by contrasting the reward of the god‐fearing with the punishment of the disobedient. The “instructions of the farmer” include agricultural advice. [1] The text ends with short expressions of humility and submission. [19] [20]

Instructions of Shupe‐Ameli (AKA: "S(h)ima Milka" or "Hear the Advice"): A father provides his son with conservative "Positive Wisdom" (to work with friends, avoid bad company, not desire other men's wives, etc.); however, the son counters with critical "Negative Wisdom" commonly found in the "Vanity Literature" or "Wisdom in Protest" genre of wisdom literature (it is all pointless since you will die). [2] [5]

Nig-Nam Nu-Kal ("Nothing is of Value"): A number of short Sumerian that celebrate life with the repeated refrain "Nothing is of worth, but life itself is sweet". [5]

Ancient Egyptian literature

In ancient Egyptian literature, wisdom literature belonged to the sebayt ("teaching") genre which flourished during the Middle Kingdom of Egypt and became canonical during the New Kingdom. Notable works of this genre include the Instructions of Kagemni , The Maxims of Ptahhotep , the Instructions of Amenemhat , the Loyalist Teaching . Hymns such as A Prayer to Re-Har-akhti (c. 1230 BC) feature the confession of sins and appeal for mercy:

Do not punish me for my numerous sins, [for] I am one who knows not his own self, I am a man without sense. I spend the day following after my [own] mouth, like a cow after grass. [21]

Much of the surviving wisdom literature of ancient Egypt was concerned with the afterlife. Some of these take the form of dialogues, such as The Debate Between a Man and his Soul from 20th–18th centuries BC, which features a man from the Middle Kingdom lamenting about life as he speaks with his ba. [22] Other texts display a variety of views concerning life after death, including the rationalist skeptical The Immortality of Writers and the Harper's Songs , the latter of which oscillates between hopeful confidence and reasonable doubt. [23]

Hermetic tradition

The Corpus Hermeticum is a piece of Egyptian-Greek wisdom literature in the form of a dialogue between Hermes Trismegistus and a disciple. The majority of the text date to the 1st–4th century AD, though the original materials the texts may be older; [24] recent scholarship confirms that the syncretic nature of Hermeticism arose during the times of Roman Egypt, but the contents of the tradition parallel the older wisdom literature of Ancient Egypt, suggesting origins during the Pharaonic Age. [25] [26] The Hermetic texts of the Egyptians mostly dealt with summoning spirits, animating statues, Babylonian astrology, and the then-new practice of alchemy; additional mystical subjects include divine oneness, purification of the soul, and rebirth through the enlightenment of the mind. [27]

Islamic Hermeticism

The wisdom literature of Egyptian Hermeticism ended up as part of Islamic tradition, with his writings considered by the Abbasids as sacred inheritance from the Prophets and Hermes himself as the ancestor of Muhammad. In the version of the Hermetic texts kept by the Ikhwan al-Safa, Hermes Trismegistus is identified as the ancient prophet Idris; according to their tradition, Idris traveled from Egypt into heaven and Eden, bringing the Black Stone back to earth when he landed in India. [28] The star-worshipping sect known as the Sabians of Harran also believed that their doctrine descended from Hermes Trismegistus. [29]

Biblical wisdom literature and Jewish texts

Illuminated manuscript depicting Job, his friends, and the leviathan, Mount Athos, c. 1300 VPEDI590fol18v.jpg
Illuminated manuscript depicting Job, his friends, and the leviathan, Mount Athos, c. 1300

The most famous examples of wisdom literature are found in the Bible. [30] [31] Wisdom [lower-alpha 1] is a central topic in the Sapiential Books [lower-alpha 2] , i.e., Proverbs, Psalms, Job, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Book of Wisdom, Wisdom of Sirach, and to some extent Baruch. Not all the Psalms are usually regarded as belonging to the Wisdom tradition. [34] Others such as Epistle of Aristeas, Pseudo-Phocylides and 4 Maccabees are also considered sapiential.

The later Sayings of the Fathers, or Pirkei Avot in the Talmud follows in the tradition of wisdom literature, focusing more on Torah study as a means for achieving a reward, rather than studying wisdom for its own sake. [35]

Other traditions

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ The Greek noun sophia ( σοφῐ́ᾱ , sophíā) is the translation of "wisdom" in the Greek Septuagint for Hebrew Ḥokmot ( חכמות , khakhamút)
  2. ↑ In Judaism, the Books of Wisdom other than the Wisdom of Solomon and Sirach are regarded as part of the Ketuvim or "Writings", while Wisdom of Solomon and Sirach are not considered part of the biblical canon. Similarly, in Christianity, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes are included in the Old Testament by all traditions, while Wisdom and Sirach are regarded in some traditions as deuterocanonical works which are placed in the Apocrypha within the Lutheran and Anglican Bible translations. [32] [33]

Related Research Articles

The Book of Proverbs is a book in the third section of the Hebrew Bible traditionally ascribed to King Solomon and his students later appearing in 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.

The Old Testament (OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew and occasionally Aramaic writings by the Israelites. The second division of Christian Bibles is the New Testament, written in Koine Greek.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hermes Trismegistus</span> Legendary author of the Hermetica

Hermes Trismegistus is a legendary Hellenistic period figure that originated as a syncretic combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth. He is the purported author of the Hermetica, a widely diverse series of ancient and medieval pseudepigraphica that lay the basis of various philosophical systems known as Hermeticism.

Akkadian literature is the ancient literature written in the Akkadian language in Mesopotamia during the period spanning the Middle Bronze Age to the Iron Age.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ziusudra</span> King of Shuruppak (c. 2900 BC)

Ziusudra of Shuruppak is listed in the WB-62 Sumerian King List recension as the last king of Sumer prior to the Great Flood. He is subsequently recorded as the hero of the Eridu Genesis and appears in the writings of Berossus as Xisuthros.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hermeticism</span> Philosophy based on the teachings of Hermes Trismegistus

Hermeticism or Hermetism is a philosophical and religious system based on the purported teachings of Hermes Trismegistus. These teachings are contained in the various writings attributed to Hermes, which were produced over a period spanning many centuries and may be very different in content and scope.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Book of Wisdom</span> Jewish work written in Greek generally dated to the mid-first century BC

The Book of Wisdom, or the Wisdom of Solomon, is a book written in Greek and most likely composed in Alexandria, Egypt. It is not part of the Hebrew Bible but is included in the Septuagint. Generally dated to the mid-first century BC, or to the reign of Caligula, the central theme of the work is "wisdom" itself, appearing under two principal aspects. The first aspect is, in its relation to mankind, wisdom is the perfection of knowledge of the righteous as a gift from God showing itself in action. The second aspect is, in direct relation to God, wisdom is with God from all eternity. It is one of the seven sapiential or wisdom books in the Septuagint, the others being Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Job, and Sirach. It is one of the deuterocanonical books, i.e. it is included in the canons of the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church, but most Protestants consider it part of the Apocrypha.

<i>Atra-Hasis</i> Akadian creation myth

Atra-Hasis is an 18th-century BC Akkadian epic, recorded in various versions on clay tablets, named for its protagonist, Atrahasis. The Atra-Hasis tablets include both a cosmological creation myth and one of three surviving Babylonian flood myths. The name "Atra-Hasis" also appears, as a king of Shuruppak in the times before a flood, on one of the Sumerian King Lists.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ancient literature</span> Literature produced in ancient times

Ancient literature comprises religious and scientific documents, tales, poetry and plays, royal edicts and declarations, and other forms of writing that were recorded on a variety of media, including stone, clay tablets, papyri, palm leaves, and metal. Before the spread of writing, oral literature did not always survive well, but some texts and fragments have persisted. One can conclude that an unknown number of written works too have likely not survived the ravages of time and are therefore lost.

<i>Instruction of Amenemope</i> Ancient Egyptian literary work

Instruction of Amenemope is a literary work composed in Ancient Egypt, most likely during the Ramesside Period ; it contains thirty chapters of advice for successful living, ostensibly written by the scribe Amenemope son of Kanakht as a legacy for his son. A characteristic product of the New Kingdom "Age of Personal Piety", the work reflects on the inner qualities, attitudes, and behaviors required for a happy life in the face of increasingly difficult social and economic circumstances. It is widely regarded as one of the masterpieces of ancient near-eastern wisdom literature and has been of particular interest to modern scholars because of its similarity to the later biblical Book of Proverbs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sumerian literature</span> 18th–17th century BCE writings

Sumerian literature constitutes the earliest known corpus of recorded literature, including the religious writings and other traditional stories maintained by the Sumerian civilization and largely preserved by the later Akkadian and Babylonian empires. These records were written in the Sumerian language in the 18th and 17th centuries BC during the Middle Bronze Age.

<i>Instructions of Shuruppak</i> Sumerian wisdom literature

The Instructions of Shuruppak are a significant example of Sumerian wisdom literature. Wisdom literature, intended to teach proper piety, inculcate virtue, and preserve community standards, was common throughout the ancient Near East. Its incipit sets the text in great antiquity by : "In those days, in those far remote times, in those nights, in those faraway nights, in those years, in those far remote years." The precepts are placed in the mouth of a king Šuruppak (SU.KUR.RUki), son of Ubara-Tutu. Ubara-Tutu is recorded in most extant copies of the Sumerian king list as being the final king of Sumer prior to the deluge. Ubara-tutu is briefly mentioned in tablet XI of the Epic of Gilgamesh, where he is identified as the father of Utnapishtim, a character who is instructed by the god Ea to build a boat in order to survive the coming flood. Grouped with the other cuneiform tablets from Abu Salabikh, the Instructions date to the early third millennium BCE, being among the oldest surviving literature.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sumerian religion</span> First religion of the Mesopotamia region which is tangible by writing

Sumerian religion was the religion practiced by the people of Sumer, the first literate civilization found in recorded history and based in ancient Mesopotamia. The Sumerians regarded their divinities as responsible for all matters pertaining to the natural and social orders.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Song of the hoe</span>

The Song of the hoe or the Creation of the pickax is a Sumerian creation myth, written on clay tablets from the last century of the 3rd millennium BCE.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dialogue between a Man and His God</span> Piece of Wisdom Literature from Old Babylonian period

The Dialogue between a Man and His God is the earliest known text to address the answer to the question of why a god permits evil, or theodicy, a reflection on human suffering. It is a piece of Wisdom Literature extant on a single clay cuneiform tablet written in Akkadian and attributed to Kalbanum, on the last line, an individual otherwise unknown. It is dated to the latter part of the Old Babylonian period, around the reign of Ammi-Ditana according to Lambert, and is currently housed in the Louvre Museum, accession number AO 4462. It is of unknown provenance as it was purchased from an antiquities dealer by the Museum in 1906. It shares much of its style with an earlier Sumerian work, “Man and His God”, a penitential prayer of the Ur III period.

Counsels of Wisdom is a piece of Babylonian wisdom literature written in Akkadian containing moral exhortations. It is composed primarily of two-line units, without sections. A translation of extant portions of the text was published in Lambert 1996. Existing manuscripts are fragmentary, but the original was estimated to be about 160 lines.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Proverbs 7</span> Book of Proverbs, chapter 7

Proverbs 7 is the seventh 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; 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.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Samet, Nili (2020). "Mesopotamian Wisdom". The Wiley Blackwell companion to wisdom literature. Wiley Blackwell. pp. 328–348. ISBN   9781119158257.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Clarke, Michael (2019). Achilles Beside Gilgamesh: Mortality and Wisdom in Early Epic Poetry. Cambridge University Press. pp. 55–56. ISBN   978-1-108-48178-6.
  3. 1 2 3 Hilber, John W. (2019). Boda, Mark J.; Meek, Russell L.; Osborne, William R. (eds.). Riddles and Revelations: Explorations into the Relationship between Wisdom and Prophecy in the Hebrew Bible. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN   978-0-567-67165-3.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Cohen, Yoram (2013). Wisdom from the Late Bronze Age. Society of Biblical Literature. ISBN   978-1-58983-754-6.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Cohen, Yoram; Wasserman, Nathan (2021). "Mesopotamian Wisdom Literature". In Kynes, Will (ed.). The Oxford Handbook of Wisdom and the Bible. Oxford University Press. pp. 125–131. ISBN   978-0-19-066128-1.
  6. ↑ Bullock, C. Hassell (2007). An Introduction to the Old Testament Poetic Books. Moody Publishers. ISBN   978-1575674506.
  7. ↑ Samuel Noah Kramer (1961). Sumerian mythology: a study of spiritual and literary achievement in the third millennium B.C. Forgotten Books. pp. 72–. ISBN   978-1605060491 . Retrieved 9 June 2011.
  8. ↑ Leo G. Perdue (1991). Wisdom in revolt: metaphorical theology in the Book of Job. Continuum International Publishing Group. pp. 79–. ISBN   978-1850752837 . Retrieved 29 May 2011.
  9. ↑ "A Dialogue Between a Man and His God [CDLI Wiki]". cdli.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 2019-07-06.
  10. ↑ Hartley, John E. (1988). The Book of Job. Eerdmans. ISBN   978-0802825285.
  11. ↑ John L. McKenzie, Dictionary of the Bible, Simon & Schuster, 1965 p. 440.
  12. ↑ John Gwyn Griffiths (1991). The Divine Verdict: A Study of Divine Judgement in the Ancient Religions. Brill. ISBN   9004092315.
  13. ↑ W. C. Kaiser, Kr., 'Ahikar uh-hi’kahr', in The Zondervan Encyclopedia of the Bible, ed. by Merrill C. Tenney, rev. edn by Moisés Silva, 5 vols (Zondervan, 2009), s.v.
  14. 1 2 "The Instructions of Shuruppag: Translation". etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk. Oxford University.
  15. ↑ Samet, Nili (4 May 2023). "Instructions of Shuruppak: The World's Oldest Instruction Collection". In Cogan, Mordechai; Dell, Katharine J.; Glatt-Gilad, David A. (eds.). Human Interaction with the Natural World in Wisdom Literature and Beyond: Essays in Honour of Tova L. Forti. Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 216–229. ISBN   978-0-567-70121-3.
  16. ↑ Dell, Katherine J.; Millar, Suzanna R.; Keefer, Arthur Jan (9 June 2022). The Cambridge Companion to Biblical Wisdom Literature. Cambridge University Press. ISBN   978-1-108-66581-0.
  17. ↑ The Schoyen Collection website notes, from a Neo-Sumerian tablet of ca. 1900–1700 BCE: line 50: Do not curse with powerful means (3rd Commandment); line 28: Do not kill (6th Commandment); lines 33–34: Do not laugh with or sit alone in a chamber with a girl that is married (7th Commandment); lines 28–31: Do not steal or commit robbery (8th Commandment); and line 36: Do not spit out lies (9th Commandment).
  18. ↑ Lenzi, Alan (10 January 2020). An Introduction to Akkadian Literature: Contexts and Content. Penn State University Press. p. 180. ISBN   978-1-64602-032-4.
  19. ↑ Radner, Karen; Moeller, Nadine; Potts, Daniel T. (2022). The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East: From the end of the third millennium BC to the fall of Babylon. Oxford University Press. p. 226. ISBN   978-0-19-068757-1.
  20. ↑ Dell, Katherine J.; Millar, Suzanna R.; Keefer, Arthur Jan (2022). The Cambridge Companion to Biblical Wisdom Literature. Cambridge University Press. ISBN   978-1-108-48316-2.
  21. ↑ Bullock, C. Hassell (2007). An Introduction to the Old Testament Poetic Books. Moody Publishers. ISBN   978-1575674506.
  22. ↑ James P. Allen, The Debate between a Man and His Soul: A Masterpiece of Ancient Egyptian Literature Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. ISBN   978-9004193031
  23. ↑ "Ancient Egyptian Literature Volume 1: The Old and Middle Kingdom", Miriam Lichtheim,University of California, 1975, ISBN   0520028996
  24. ↑ Copenhaver, Brian P. (1995). "Introduction". Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius in a New English Translation, with Notes and Introduction. Cambridge University Press. ISBN   978-0521425438. Scholars generally locate the theoretical Hermetica, 100 to 300 CE; most would put C.H. I toward the beginning of that time. [...] [I]t should be noted that Jean-Pierre Mahe accepts a second-century limit only for the individual texts as they stand, pointing out that the materials on which they are based may come from the first century CE or even earlier. [...] To find theoretical Hermetic writings in Egypt, in Coptic [...] was a stunning challenge to the older view, whose major champion was Father Festugiere, that the Hermetica could be entirely understood in a post-Platonic Greek context.
  25. ↑ Fowden, Garth, The Egyptian Hermes : a historical approach to the late pagan mind (Cambridge/New York : Cambridge University Press), 1986
  26. ↑ Jean-Pierre Mahé, "Preliminary Remarks on the Demotic "Book of Thoth" and the Greek Hermetica" Vigiliae Christianae50.4 (1996:353–363) pp. 358f.
  27. ↑ "Stages of Ascension in Hermetic Rebirth". Esoteric.msu.edu. Retrieved 2015-06-25.
  28. ↑ Prophets in the Quran: An Introduction to the Quran and Muslim Exegesis, p. 46. Wheeler, Brannon. Continuum International Publishing Group, 2002
  29. ↑ Stapleton, Henry E.; Azo, R.F.; Hidayat Husain, M. (1927). "Chemistry in Iraq and Persia in the Tenth Century A.D." Memoirs of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. VIII (6): 317–418. OCLC   706947607. pp. 398–403.
  30. ↑ Crenshaw, James L. "The Wisdom Literature", in Knight, Douglas A. and Tucker, Gene M. (eds), The Hebrew Bible and Its Modern Interpreters (1985).
  31. ↑ Anderson, Bernhard W. (1967). "The Beginning of Wisdom – Israels Wisdom literature". The Living World of the Old Testament. Longmans. pp. 570ff. ISBN   978-0582489080.
  32. ↑ Comay, Joan; Brownrigg, Ronald (1993). Who's Who in the Bible: The Old Testament and the Apocrypha, The New Testament. New York: Wing Books. pp. Old Testament, 355–356. ISBN   0-517-32170-X.
  33. ↑ Geisler, Norman L.; MacKenzie, Ralph E. (1995). Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences. Baker Publishing Group. p. 171. ISBN   978-0801038754. Lutherans and Anglicans used it only for ethical / devotional matters but did not consider it authoritative in matters of faith.
  34. ↑ Estes, Daniel J. (2005). Handbook on the Wisdom Books and Psalms. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic. p. 190-192. ISBN   978-0-8010-2699-7.
  35. ↑ Adams, Samuel L.; Goff, Matthew (2020). Wiley Blackwell Companion to Wisdom Literature. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 369–371. ISBN   978-1119158271 . Retrieved 23 December 2021.
  36. ↑ Canevaro, Lilah Grace (2014). "Hesiod and Hávamál: Transitions and the Transmission of Wisdom". Oral Tradition. 29 (1): 99–126. doi: 10.1353/ort.2014.0003 . hdl: 10355/65338 . ISSN   1542-4308. S2CID   162916393 . Retrieved 23 December 2021.
  37. ↑ Narayan Ram Acharya. Subhashita Ratna Bhandagara (in Sanskrit). sanskritebooks.org/.

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