Wisdom Literature by Samuel E. Balentine, and: An Introduction to Israel’s Wisdom Traditions by John L. McLaughlin (review)

In these recent introductions to ancient Israel’s wisdom literature, two accomplished scholars offer engaging works that cover much of the same ground with distinct emphases based on their different interests and levels of detail. As stated in the series preface, Balentine’s book is aimed at “students in the early stages of their learning” (p. ix), whereas McLaughlin’s book includes more technical details that will interest more advanced readers. Both are very well written, informed by major questions in contemporary scholarship, and organized with exceptional clarity.

McLaughlin’s book begins with three introductory chapters on “the nature of wisdom,” wisdom’s “international context,” and the literary forms and rhetorical features typically used in sapiential literature. Five chapters then follow, one on each of the canonical wisdom books: Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, Sirach, and Wisdom of Solomon. The book concludes with three chapters respectively on the evidence of wisdom’s influence in nonsapiential texts in the First Testament (McL.’s preferred term), “wisdom theology,” and finally, “the continuation of wisdom” in later Jewish and Christian texts. McL.’s longstanding interests in comparative analyses and the participation of ancient Israel’s thought and literature in the broader context of ancient Near Eastern ideas, traditions, and literary forms is evident throughout his introduction. McL.’s early chapter on wisdom’s international context includes separate sections on Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Canaan, along with helpful sidebars and welcome attention to similarities and resonances between various non-Israelite texts and Israel’s own wisdom literature.

Balentine’s book opens with a brief introduction that characterizes the wisdom tradition in ancient Israel as beset by several related but distinct tensions. One is the often drawn distinction between wisdom as divine insight and wisdom as practical instruction. B. also distinguishes God’s gift of wisdom—for example, that given to Solomon—from the knowledge that God forbids—for example, that from the forbidden fruit acquired in Eden by Eve. In the former, the source of wisdom is in piety, whereas in the latter knowledge is gained through a transgression beyond the limits of traditional piety. B. sees the tensions within the tradition as in part a matter of the extent to which the books emphasize the former view—for example, in Proverbs, Sirach, and the Wisdom of Solomon—versus the latter— for example, in Job and Ecclesiastes. B. begins his book with a call for future work to situate Israel’s wisdom traditions within the wider history of wisdom, including not only Greek and Hellenistic philosophy but also Buddhist wisdom, African philosophical thought, modern philosophy, and more. B. does not pursue this exhortation in any comprehensive manner, but insightful moments of such comparison are present at various points in his brief introduction.

In addition to the introduction and conclusion, B.’s book includes a chapter on each of the five canonical wisdom books. His chapter on Proverbs highlights “the generative complexity of the mosaic that is Proverbs” (p. 28). This complexity includes conceptual tensions that resist “settled conclusions” (p. 9), the sociopolitical settings of the family and the court as distinct contexts for Proverbs’ wisdom (p. 17), as well as the book’s various literary forms, collections, and ancient versions. Proverbs is a collection of collections with earlier material in chaps. 10–29 and later material in chaps. 1–9. For B., the earlier material is primarily animated by a human desire to intellectualize piety by developing knowledge about how to navigate complex life experiences. Such a process of thinking about thinking is artfully expressed in Walter Benjamin’s quotation that serves as the epigraph for the chapter (see Benjamin, “The Story Teller,” in Illuminations [ed. Hannah Arendt; New York: Schocken, 1968] 108). Benjamin defines a proverb as “a ruin which stands on the site of an old story and in which a moral twines about...