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Among the Ancient Near Eastern Literature that helps us better understand biblical Wisdom, there are some Egyptian and Mesopotamian literature of wisdom, which show close connection to relevant biblical texts in the Old Testament.


One of them is The Instruction (Teaching) of Amenemope, which Bruce k. Waltke (“The Book of Proverbs and Ancient Wisdom Literature,” Bibliotheca Sacra 136 (July-Sept. 1979): 211-38) asserts belongs to the Egyptian instruction literature and most closely resembles the Book of Proverbs. Bandstra (p 407) also suggests that the book of Proverbs looks similar with the ancient Egyptian instruction literature in that both may have been the court wisdom to train the next generation of their leaders for effective public service. The date of this text is disputed a lot and the recent discovery in the Cairo Museum supports the date before the time of Solomon (Waltke, p 223, note 9), which Bandstra suggests around 1200 BCE (p 407). According to Waltke, The Instruction (Teaching) of Amenemope, is Amenemope’s expressive writing, who is an Egyptian high official in the administration of royal estates (‘a tax official’ according to Walter Byerlin, Near Eastern Religious Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 1978: 49), to his son who is a young priestly scribe. The literary structure of the Egyptian instruction literature, which includes a) a title, b) a prose or poetic introduction of the motive of the instruction, c) the contents of admonitions and sayings, is also found, with the omission of the first section (a title), in Proverbs 22:17-24:22 which is known as “Thirty Sayings of the Wise”; that is, the motive of the admonitions is given in 22:17-21 followed by the diverse contents of admonitions in 22:22-24:22 (Waltke, p225). Bandstra also presents the close proverbial parallels between The Instruction (Teaching) of Amenemope and Proverbs 22:17-24:22, which was suggested by Simpson (“The Hebrew Book of Proverbs and the Teaching of Amenophis,” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 12 (1926):232-39.), as an example of direct literary borrowing even with their differences in wording. This close proverbial parallels as well as the similar literary structure between the Egyptian instruction literature and the Book of Proverbs helps to understand the biblical literature of Wisdom better by providing a basis of the form and content, and setting and function of Wisdom literature in the Bible.


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One of the characteristics of the Ancient Near Eastern Literature, Claude Mariottini suggests (“the Pessimistic Literature of the Ancient Near East,” posted on the blog, a Christian perspective on the Old Testament and Current Events, on March 5, 2012), is a “pessimism about life,” which focuses on two major themes of life:1) theme of innocent suffering, that is, the question of “Why does a righteous person suffer?” and 2) the search for the meaning of life. Mariottini defines “pessimism” as “the inclination to emphasize adverse aspects, conditions, and possibilities.” With this definition of “pessimism”, Mariottini suggests that pessimistic literature emphasizes what is ‘unjust, paradoxical, or just plain confusing.’ The issue of the question of the suffering of the righteous person is articulated in the book of Job in the Bible. Bandstra asserts that wisdom literature relies on a “basic belief in the goodness of God’s created order” and the issue of ‘theodicy’, that is, “the justice of God.” According to Bandstra, the issue of theodicy concerns the problem of reconciling the belief of God’s goodness with the facts of the suffering and injustice in the world and it is also behind the theological debate going on in the book of Job (p 401).


Among the pessimistic literature of the Ancient Near East,  Man and His God: A Sumerian Variation of the “Job” Motif (James B. Pritchard, ed., the Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 3rd. ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978: 589-591); Walter Byerlin, Near Eastern Religious Texts Relating to the Old Testament, (Philadelphia:Westminster Press,1978: 140-142)), is called “the Sumerian Job.”  According to Byerlin, Man and His God is Sumerian Wisdom text and the date of being copied is 1800 BC. The content of the text is also predicted from the title; like the book of Job, it is about an anonymous man involved in suffering without any reason, but, unlike Job, he only asks for deliverance in humble lament and petition; for he says no one is free from sins. As a result, his god saved him from the misfortune and he finally praises the god (Byerlin, p140; Pritchard, p589). Byerlin suggests that the core of this piece of teaching recalls the prose framework to the biblical book of Job (1:1-2:10; 42:7-9) though it is about 1500 years later (p140).  Bandstra also suggests that this Mesopotamian literature of wisdom, A Man and His God, has a common view with the book of Job that the conventional wisdom, that is, ‘if one does the righteous, then one has blessings; if one does the wicked, then one will has curse’(Dr. Lester’s lecture of “Wisdom A”), does not work out in every situation (p 409). Even with its side title “the Sumerian Job” and the similar contents, this Sumerian Job appears to be different from the book of Job, in that it is not from theological speculation that Job ponders in his experience of ‘an obvious misfit between the world of doctrine and the world of experience’ (Bandstra, p 409), but from Sumerian pragmatism (Byerlin, p 140). However, it still helps to understand the motive of dissenting wisdom , which Dr. Lester explains as “”setting the bait” of conventional wisdom, before “springing the trap” of the dissenting ideology”(Dr. Lester’s lecture of Wisdom B).



I would like to add one interesting thing that Bandstra presents about the similarities of the Egyptian wisdom and the Proverbs; the Egyptian wisdom personifies ‘wisdom’ as a goddess (the Goddess Maat, the personification of truth, morality, and justice in Mariottini’s post) as it is portrayed as a respectable and proper woman (1:20-33; 8:1-36; 9:1-6) contrasted with ‘folly’ pictured as a loose woman who deceives a young man with sensuous pleasures and led him to his death (7:6-27; 9:13-18) in the Proverbs. Bandstra suggests that this personification of wisdom might reflect the gender of the Hebrew word for wisdom and also the virtuous wife as the model for Ideal Wisdom as described in Proverbs 31:10-31 (p 404-405). As Bandstra indicates by citing Newman (1989), this is a remarkable concession for a patriarchal society like Egypt and Israel or Judah (p 405).


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