The Wisdom Literature - Essay Example

Wisdom Literature Wisdom literature is based on the practical knowledge of Semites who were never a philosophical thinker .They advocated moral principles of life and not much of thoughts about life. Here the Gospel of Mathews suggests Jesus’ twelve followers not to visit the Gentiles and Samaritans, while the Gospel of Mark and Luke present in a contradictory way Jesus entering Gentile territory. This is a critical point where the Gospel of Mathew is colliding with that of Gentiles and Samaritans. Where as in the John’s gospel the Jesus is conversing with a Samaritan lady and stayed there for 2 days which is also contradictory with Mathews‘s Gospel. Here we can see that presentation of the Gospel of Jesus made by Mathew, Luke and John are wrong and not the uttered words of Jesus. Exegesis here enquires about the whereabouts of the Gospels on Samaritans and Gentiles and why Jesus cautions twelve e followers against them. Both the parties are non believers of Christ. Here why Jesus acting against his preaching is considered as a matter of concern. These gospels were written 40 to 45 years after the life of Jesus. They wanted to project the activities of Jesus in the present world after resurrection rather than previous life. This shows how much he would act on his own words .Here the Gospels were written for different people like gentiles and non Christians. After the resurrection, Jesus wanted the good news to spread to the whole people in the world. The sacred scriptures are analyzed by students in different ways like; how it is written and who has written it. These scriptures are written by people in various times and various ways. An assessment is an important task to reveal their authenticity. Source criticism and redaction criticism are looked into to understand the authenticity of the text as to if it is myth or not .Moreover the old testament or Hebrew texts are mainly story writings which contain history, poems and words of wisdom. Many wisdom texts reflect the ancient Israelites wisdom literature like the Mediterranean wisdom literature. Here in the text the concept ‘wisdom” is explained as “how to live “according to experience observation and reflection Bible normally reflects the wisdom teaching in order to help Catholics and non – Catholics to live a life in a wise manner. Wisdom means the people live according to the teachings of God. Every time, according to the teaching of God; the purpose of life is to serve others and loves all people as one. Wisdom does not come with intelligence or knowledge alone, but one has to understand the facts of life and live accordingly in the right manner. It is commented that wisdom come straight away from God and the Hebrew texts of the Torah and Prophets are an example of that. There could be seen visible contrast in the writings of the Bible and wisdom. Wisdom was showing interests in Israeli salvation history while Bible put forward the life of Christ and his teachings. In the later times, the Jews were forced to follow pagan gods and people who followed Torah was tortured and murdered. The people who disbelieved in God were rewarded and this question again the meaning of wisdom and principles it advocated. Many of the wisdom literatures questions about these unparalleled events and their implication on human life. The wisdom literature also questions why wicked people prosper and good people suffer for which no answer can be given from a religious perspective. .Moreover the Proverbs and the wisdoms books suggest many wisdom related quotes and proverbs. Proverb which is meaningful short sentences was found in both Old and New Testament. Here many Gospels present Jesus as a teacher of wisdom which can be understandable as he always spoke in proverbs. The Psalms is considered by both Jews and Christians as best known books of wisdom. The psalms believed in Thanks giving and other major events in Israel’s history. Other belief which did not have much important in Israel was the resurrection event as they did not believe in life after death. Hence they did not believe in the life after death of Jesus. These articles related to Wisdom, Gospel, Judaism and Jesus teachings are trying to correlate with each other in order to find their authenticity and geniuses. In Israel’s faith wisdom recompense after death and thus wisdom is good in concise. The prospering wicked people will however suffer in the end. Thus after life is not given much importance in Judaism as in Bible and Jesus’ teachings. The Biblical criticism is another part of the argument which will go on in this section of the paper. The Bible is written 3000 or 2000 years ago and credibility of this texts and words of wisdom are highly hypothetical. There are rumors that these texts are compiled by different people at different point of times. These can be myths or unknown events in the life of an unknown person called “Jesus”. There is not a balanced understanding of the passages in the Bible, so the messages provided in the Bible is not credible. “Many of the best biblical scholars in the history of Christianity were men and women who came to a deep understanding of the Bible by praying with Scripture and trying to live out its meaning in their lives”.(winzip 3) There are different kinds of criticism of the bible they are text criticism, here the experts who are skilled in analyzing manuscripts study the Bible and tests its age and authenticity. Next is source criticism where the biblical author’s source is analyzed, Form criticism where oral forms of literature in the Bible is checked. The Tradition criticism where the community which handover in the background is checked. Then the literary quality of the Bible is checked to see its style, characters, plot and settings. In the end social – scientific criticism which explores the social and cultural background of Bible. After all these criticisms, the bible is analyzed as a credible text or not, because the living and moral understanding of people are based on this. The Scholars have attempted to find out the nature of psalms by considering its literary forms and content. They were revealed to be some major types of hymns and psalms in the wisdom literature. Psalms are not directed towards God but to the parents and they upbringing of a child. It is mainly consisting of moral teaching and hymns are divine writings. These psalms are used by Jews and Christians in prayer and it is the experience of people with God when they address to God. “The Books of Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs, Wisdom command Search, are all versified by the skillful use of parallelism, that is, of the balanced and symmetrical phrases peculiar to Hebrew poetry”(Wisdom Books,710). Since psalms have an educational purpose, these are called literature of wisdom, while hymns are prayers to God. The hymns praise God and also imbibe the faith of God in the human mind. Human need both hymns and wisdom literature to grow spiritually. The wisdom literature i.e., the psalms are the experience of people with God and describes on the way to live in the world and solving the problems of life. The book of Job and explains the dangers of life and how to live the life from the standpoint and learned men were called “Sages”. The personification of wisdom explains on the life of Christ, his teaching and his union with people while dwelling among them. The incarnation of Jesus and his resurrection is given importance in the wisdom of literature. Here the book of Job explains about the reason for tragic events in the life of people. Other people enquire why God let this happen. People want to know from God why the good are suffering and the bad are prospering. This is related to the “doctrine of retribution” according to which God rewards the just and punishes the evil. The doctrine also suggests that there is an intricate connection of good work and good results. Here also a theodicy arises where the question comes as to the existence of evil in a world commanded by a good God. Here the question is why can’t God stop evil from happening? This is where the story of Job arises and the conclusion can be if evil does not exist, how can good be categorized as good, where will be the differentiation coming from? The concept of divine retribution is the main topic of job’s story and the innocent sufferings and evil rewarding is projected in the story well for the common man to understand the God’s way of working. However the “doctrine of retribution” does not support well the idea as to why sufferings are given to the good people and prosperity is given to the evil people. In the story of Job, the former is shown as a servant of God and very obedient to God. However when bad happens to him he curses God. Here we can understand that the evil helps God in understanding the real love of God to people. This is another way of gauging people’s faith towards God. Another concept called Ecclesiastes or “Qoheleth” means to gather or assembly or to be a preacher.In Ecclesiastes the preacher or sage is given importance as he gives advice to people and families and also guides them rightly towards moral life. The Qoheleth is supposed to be the King of Jerusalem and the son of David. As David has much importance in Judaism, Qoheleth is given equal importance along with his preaching and words of wisdom. Here along with Qoheleth, King Solomon’s words of wisdom are given importance. According to Qoheleth the success and fame of people is questionable. According to it all fancy things wane away in the face of death. According to Qoheleth one should not live with fear but take life as it comes with a faith in God The wisdom literature suggests that one should take life as a gift of God and take good over evil and wisdom over stupidity. The ecclesiasts even tell that purpose of human life and God can be only revealed after living the life well. There is a hidden plan of God in every human life and every human should admit to the hidden plan of God. This the wisdom book ecclesiasts state that true wisdom cannot be of found under the sun, but under the light of faith. However, the moral teaching of the book is imperfect as the Old Testament. There is also this teaching of King Solomon who is thought to have built temple is suggesting that love is justice and heart should be given to God. The King Solomon is also called pseudo Solomon accepts the fact that he has been persuaded much by Hellenism due to the use of Greek literature in his works. The Wisdom of Solomon has been reflecting his Jewish culture and belief. His messages in wisdom literature reflect the Jewish religious themes. The personification of the wisdom is the significant form of wisdom The lady wisdom and proverbs are also taking on a great position in the literature of wisdom.Sirach is a more prominent wisdom in literature and she takes on a stand of the revelation of God to human beings. There are three principles in the Wisdom of Solomon; the reward of justice, the praise of wisdom by Solomon and providence of God during Exodus. The book of wisdom also gives importance to royal lines like kings, who must seek wisdom to maintain their immortal nature. If the kings seek to get immortality and wisdom they should approach God with integrity. According to the reading the wisdom is bestowed upon people who are just. From the examples of history of Israel, the creation of human beings to the Moses, God has given support to human with perseverance and righteousness. God always preserve the people who are good, and destruct those who are evil. God purposely included evil in this world to test people. However, the book of wisdom which is written 100 years before the coming of Christ is written by a Jewish person from, Alexandria, Egypt. ‘ The final word of wisdom is coming from the Book of Daniel and his words are found in the Old Testament and had close connection with words in the New Testament. The book of the Daniel is written in 3rd or 5th century BCE and was apocalyptic in nature. The book talks about the period in which the Jerusalem was in control of the Greek and the earlier chapter even explains of Persian and Macbeth rule. The first sixth chapter of Daniel is set in the 3rd century BCE in Babylon. The content of the stories is the heroic tale of the Jewish people. The stories were in third party format and no where Daniel was mentioned. Ironically the book was never thought to be written by Daniel, but included his stories along with his three friends. The first section of Daniels talks about biblical stories and these stories are memorable ones. Here it is important to understand that Jesus is the center point of all the books of Wisdom. There were lot of torture on Jews and Torah was burned in the Greek invasion period. All these show the contradictions in the books of wisdom. In the concluding portions of the book of Daniel many stories are written which shows the goodness of God and his interest in punishing the evil. The book of Daniel, supposedly do not have an author but takes its name from the hero of the story. The hero of the story is a young Jew with a name called “Daniel”. Reference 1 – winzip 3 2 - 710 – wisdom books , THE NEW AMERICAN BIBLE INTRODUCTION TO THE WISDOM BOOKS,winzip , 4,136 Read More