Counting on the Kitchen to be a safe place for honest reflection, I’m going to share something I feel a bit foolish about. I’m troubled by wisdom literature.
I don’t know what to do with it. I’ve pointed out before that I don’t think reading every line as a commandment from God works. We pick out a command here or there to apply, but we skip the ones that make us uncomfortable. We cite this truism or that truism, but we avoid the ones that, well, just don’t seem true.
Interestingly enough, Song of Solomon bothers me less than other books, partly because there isn’t much there that we extract and try to apply as law. Job gives us a narrative, which helps our Western minds, and points to the end of the book as the part where the real truths are found. (Though that doesn’t stop us from using a quote here or there if it furthers an argument)
Ecclesiastes is somewhat the same way; it seems to be a progression towards real understanding at the end, although divine truths are mixed in with the human elements along the way.
What about Proverbs? Even as we work our way through all of the literary devices (hyperbole, synecdoche and all of those other words we learned in English class), we still detect a real humanness to some of what’s said.
What about Psalms? Some of the Psalms are easy, but some are quite difficult. An obvious example are the imprecatory psalms, where the writer calls down curses on his enemies. Other psalms seem to present a “good people get good things, bad people get bad things” theology that doesn’t fit with other parts of the Bible (like the book of Job!). Yet the Psalms are quoted heavily in the New Testament; Peter even says that Psalm 2 was spoken by the Holy Spirit through David! (Acts 4:25)
So how should we read wisdom literature? How do we understand “inspiration” as applied to such books? How do we know when we’re hearing the voice of God and when we’re hearing the voice of man?
If we approach the scripture as the words from God and were the last words spoken. Then we are locked in a safe place of speaking where the Bible speaks and being silent where it is silent. We do,however, recognize that the Spirit is with us today and that he leads us. I believe that wisdom comes in our search to know the nature of God because he is truth and he is the same today as he was yesterday and will be tomorrow.To live in his nature is to glorify Him.If we chose to follow a book of rules, we have missed the good news of the scripture. In response to your article,there is a freedom in his nature that he delights in us as his children, if we abide there.
The problem is, David, that doesn’t seem to work for much of wisdom literature. First off, we know that large sections of the book of Job AREN’T God’s words, they are the misguided words of Job’s friends. Other passages are obviously meant to reflect the author’s viewpoint, not God’s, like some of the words in Psalm 73
From there, we have to work through passage by passage to see what is from God and what is from man… or so it seems to me.
Patrick Mead has a series going now that begins as How We Read/View Our Bibles and morphs into Genocide and Jesus. To put it mildly, these posts (each of them is followed by several follow-up posts) have generated some lively discussion in the comments.
In this series, he addresses some of the issues you raise. His solution is that we must read all of the Bible through the lens of Jesus, the Incarnate Word of God.
For better or worse, we read wisdom literature (and all other scripture) with a modern, Western, rational mindset.
Problem is, of course, it wasn’t written with one.
As I understand it, the Middle Easten (especially ancient) view sees scripture as a series of propositions to be discussed, negotiated, haggled over. The thinking is that iron sharpens iron, and by debating scripture’s meaning, we get closer to the truth about God and us — rather than completely comprehending it.
Let me illustrate with a sample of Harry Leichter’s Jewish humor:
________
The Priest met his friend, the Rabbi, and says to him, “You have taught me many things but there is one thing in particular I want to learn very much but you do not wish to teach it to me. I want you to teach me the Talmud.”
The Rabbi replied: “You are a Non-Jew and you have the brain of a Non-Jew.
There is no chance that you will succeed in understanding the Talmud.”
But the Priest continued in his attempt to persuade the Rabbi to teach him the Talmud.
Finally, the Rabbi agreed. The Rabbi then said to the Priest: “I agree to teach you the Talmud on condition that you answer one question.”
The Priest agreed and asked the Rabbi “What is the Question?”
The Rabbi then said to the Priest: “Two men fall down through the chimney. One comes out dirty and the other comes out clean.
Who of those two goes to wash up.”
“Very Simple,” replied the Priest. “The one who is dirty goes to wash up but the one who is clean does not go to wash up.”
The Rabbi then said to the Priest: “I told that you will not succeed in understanding the Talmud. The exact opposite happened. The clean one looks at the dirty one and thinks that he is also dirty goes to wash up. The dirty one, on the other hand, looks at the clean one and thinks that he is also clean and, therefore, does not go to wash up.”
The Priest then says to the Rabbi: “This I did not think of. Ask me, please another question.”
The Rabbi then says to the Priest: “Two men fall down through the chimney.
One comes out dirty and the other comes out clean. Who of these two goes to wash up?”
The Priest then says to the Rabbi: “Very simple. The clean one looks at the dirty one and thinks he is also dirty and goes to wash up. The dirty one, on the other hand, looks at the clean one and thinks that he is also clean and, therefore, does not go to wash up.”
The Rabbi then says to the Priest: “You are wrong again. I told you that you will not understand. The clean one looks into the mirror, sees that he is clean and, therefore, does not go to wash up. The dirty one looks into the mirror, sees that he is dirty and goes to wash up.”
The Priest complains to the Rabbi “But you did not tell me that there is a mirror there.”
The Rabbi then tells the Priest: “I told you. You are a Non-Jew, with your brain you will not succeed in understanding the Talmud. According to the Talmud, you have to think of all the possibilities.”
“All right,” groaning, said the Priest to the Rabbi. “Let us try once more. Ask me one more question.”
For the last time, said the Rabbi to the Priest. “Two men fall through the chimney. One came out dirty and the other came out clean. Who of these two went to wash up?”
“That is very simple!” replied the Priest. “If there is no mirror there the clean one will look at the dirty one and will! think that he is also dirty and will, therefore, go to wash up. The dirty one will look at the clean one and will think that he is also clean, and will, therefore, not go to wash up. If there is a mirror there, the clean one will look into the mirror and will, therefore, not go to wash up. The dirty one will look into the mirror and will see that he is dirty and will, therefore go to wash up.”
The Rabbi then says to the Priest: “I told that you will not succeed in understanding. You are a Non-Jew, you have a Non-Jewish Brain.
Tell me, how is it possible for two men to fall through a chimney and for one to come out dirty and for the other to come out clean?”
Keith wrote:
That almost sounds like some of the churches I grew up in. My Dad still describes one of the adult church members from the era of my pre-teens as not being happy about having been at church unless he had had an argument.
BTW, I loved your story of the priest and the Rabbi.
Tim, as you are pointing out, highly-poetic sections of the Bible do not address us in the way(s) that we expect them to. But then, narrative isn’t always much better along this line. The biblical narratives don’t end with, “And the moral of the story is . . . ” Whatever the story is teaching is something we have to assume or intuit or decide or whatever. We gravitate towards the N.T. letters because they address churches and we Christians read the Bible as churches. So there, it seems, we can just sort of read it off the page and go to it. In such cases, the N.T. letters and epistles are deceptively easy to understand and apply. Seems like Gordon Fee has written about that. Not to “answer” the questions you’re raising in too easy a fashion, but I’d want to go back and look at the section on Wisdom Lit. in the book by Stuart and Fee. (They may divide things up a little differently because many O.T. scholars will include only Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes as Wisdom Literature). Also, Paulist Press did a series of books called “101 Questions and Answers about . . . ” I believe one of these was on the Wisdom Lit. As I recall, it was excellent. Of the books you’ve mentioned, I’ve spent the most time with Mr. Eccles. Here’s a link to one of my posts, for what it’s worth. Best wishes.
http://frankbellizzi.blogspot.com/2011/01/book-of-ecclesiates-how-it-works-and.html
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