Wisdom Literature Religious Definition

Wisdom literature flourished throughout the ancient Middle East, with Egyptian examples dating back to before the middle of the 3rd millennium BC. It revolved around professional sages or sages and scribes in the service of the court and consisted mainly of maxims about. The literary genre of mirrors for princes, which has a long history in Islamic and Western Renaissance literature, is a secular part of wisdom literature. In ancient times, Hesiod`s didactic poetry, especially his works and days, was considered a source of knowledge, similar to the wisdom literature of Egypt, Babylonia, and Israel. [ref. needed] Pre-Islamic poetry is full of many poems of wisdom, including the poetry of Zuhayr bin Abī Sūlmā (520-609). Wisdom literature is a literary genre widespread in the ancient Near East. It consists of statements by sages and sages who offer teachings on divinity and virtue. Although this genre uses traditional oral storytelling techniques, it has been disseminated in written form.

In ancient Egyptian literature, wisdom literature belonged to the genre Sebayt („teaching”), which flourished during the Egyptian Middle Kingdom and became canonical during the New Kingdom. Notable works of this genre are the Instructions of Kagemni, the Maxims of Ptahhotep, the Instructions of Amenemhat, the Loyalist Doctrine and the Corpus Hermeticum. [9] Hymns such as A Prayer to Re-Har-akhti (c. 1230 BC) contain confession of sins and the call to mercy: wisdom literature tends to emphasize the same virtues and condemn the same vices, regardless of region and worship. It was left to the prophets of Israel to emphasize uncompromising virtue as the paramount consideration in the good life required by God. Most… can trace the rise of wisdom literature (the teachings of a sage on the hidden purposes of the Godhead) and apocalyptic traditions (which relate to the belief in the dramatic intervention of a god in human and natural events) that represent these central concerns—that is, national destiny, the importance of traditional traditions. During this period, traditional wisdom cultivated among scholars from neighboring cultures was valued in Israel. Solomon is described as the author of a vast literature comparable to that of other sages of the region.

His wisdom is given to YHWH in his account. The wisdom literature of Sumeria and Babylonia is among the oldest in the world, with Sumerian documents dating back to the third millennium BC and Babylonian documents from the second millennium BC. Many of the surviving texts discovered in Nippur are as old 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-Benevolent of ancient Sumer. [1] With the sole exception of wisdom literature, the basic genres are panegyric in nature (that is, they praise something or someone), and the magical power and use of praise is to inculcate, invoke or activate the virtues presented in praise. There are two deuterocanonical works of the kind known as wisdom literature, one Hebrew and the other Greek. The Hebrew work is called Ecclesiasticus, in the Latin Bible and in the Greek manuscripts Sophia Iēsou huiou Sirach (the wisdom of Jesus the. Much of the surviving wisdom literature of ancient Egypt dealt with life after death.

Some of them take the form of dialogues, such as The Debate Between a Man and His Soul from the 20th to the 18th Century BC, in which a man from the Middle Kingdom laments about life while talking to his Ba. [11] Other lyrics show a variety of views on the afterlife, including the rationalist skepticism The Immortality of Writers and Harper`s Songs, the latter oscillating between hopeful confidence and reasonable doubt. [12] The wisdom literature of Egyptian Hermeticism came to be part of the Islamic tradition, its writings being considered by the Abbasids as the sacred heir of the prophets and Hermes himself as the ancestor of the Prophet Muhammad. In the version of the Hermetic texts preserved by Ikhwan al-Safa, Hermes Trismegistus is identified as the ancient prophet Idris; according to their tradition, Idris traveled from Egypt to heaven and Eden and brought the Black Stone back to earth when it landed in India. [17] The star-worshipping sect known as the Sabians of Harran also believed that their doctrine descended from Hermes Trismegistus. [18] . Study of the ancient wisdom literature of the Middle East. The later sayings of the Fathers or Pirkei Avot in the Talmud are in the tradition of wisdom literature and focus more on the study of the Torah as a means of receiving a reward than on the study of wisdom for its own sake. [24] . Most of the teaching or wisdom literature written earlier was a collection of maxims and exhortations containing practical instructions for life.

In particular, many parallels have been drawn between the form and content of parts of Aménémope`s work and the Hebrew Book of Proverbs, although the nature of the.. were in the field of wisdom literature and philosophy. In a work on the analogous interpretation of the Mosaic law, Aristobulus of Paneas (2nd century BC) Philo anticipated when he tried to reconcile Greek philosophy and the Torah. He used allegory to explain anthropomorphisms in the Bible and affirmed it. The most famous examples of wisdom literature are found in the Bible. [19] [20] Wisdom[a] is a central theme in the books of wisdom,[b] i.e. Proverbs, Psalms, Job, the Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, the Book of Wisdom, the Wisdom of Sirachus, and to some extent Baruch. Not all psalms are generally associated with the wisdom tradition. [23] Others like Aristeas, Pseudo-Phocylides, and 4 Maccabees are also considered wisdom. Point in the genre of wisdom literature. From the 1st millennium BC, the emergence of factual historical chronicles and a flood of polemical political and religious writings reflecting the rivalry between Assyria and Babylonia are worth mentioning. Very late in the millennium, the first astronomical texts appeared.

The Corpus Hermeticum is a work of Egyptian-Greek wisdom literature in the form of a dialogue between Hermes Trismegistus and a disciple.