Talk:Book of Proverbs

Untitled
I have replaced the previous version of this article. I have written this article of a course. It was researched, includes a bibliography, and includes material from the previous article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Chris Keezer (talk • contribs)

Setting
I just worked under the heading "setting". This is one of my first edits for the English Wikipedia (did lots in Dutch) and I am eager to get some feedback. Thank you very much. Penelopeia 19:29, 25 July 2007 (UTC)penelopeia

Tagged in Article for 14 months: now here to discuss
The paragraph below, with it's tag, is just cut and paste from the article. It will stay here unless someone want to source it and put it back. T B erg  Drop a Line ޗ pls  02:32, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

m vnmvnmbnmoiy b h87 The central theme to the book of Proverbs can be linked to Proverbs 1:7 "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; Fools despise wisdom and instruction." This theme of centrality of the knowledge of God runs through the entirety of the book. The instructions that are given, although they are for everyday circumstances, allude to humankind’s uprightness before God. The thought pattern that the reverence and respect for God in all circumstances brings true knowledge is encouraged in this book. The book centers on the willingness to learn as important. God’s people were brought into the belief that God’s law is something that is part of life and duty, and this required obedience. Proverbs calls this kind of obedience the love of the Lord. This obligation, which is similar to the knowledge of God that they had from the prophetic books, involves reverence, gratitude, and commitment to do the will of God in every circumstance. The main goal of Proverbs is to define clearly what it means to be fully devoted to God’s will and seeing his will accomplished in this world.

Article Revamp
Let's get this ball rolling. I agree The Book of Proverbs page should be redone to look and read something like The Book of Romans page. Who would like to help with this? --Wooddoor (talk) 20:08, 17 September 2009 (UTC)


 * This article needs a revamp -- it reads clumsy. Thoughts and ideas are repeated over and over again and could be significantly cleaned up -- it need to be streamlined and organized more efficiently. Also, more sources need to be found and cited in the article, not just placed in a long list at the end.  This is my indication that I will begin (or really, continue) to clean this article up.  Any suggestions, complaints, protests, can be given here and I will be willing to discuss.  Cheers,  T B erg   Drop a Line ޗ pls  03:07, 19 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I read in the article that the rabbinic college took out the book of Proverbs during the late first century. But if they would believe and know what the Bible is they would know that everything in it is true and that nothing should be taken or added to it. So why would they take it out, even if they thought it could be an anthology of anthologies? As it is written in Deuteronomy 4:2, "Do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it, but keep the commands of the Lord your God that I give you."-2601:1C2:1000:3790:55E8:DE42:24F1:7F8A (talk) 05:35, 24 January 2023 (UTC)


 * The Hebrew Bible/Old Testament as you know it did not exist yet. So: which Bible? There was no Bible, there was the Pentateuch and a bunch of other writings. You call it Bible, for them it was not Scripture. tgeorgescu (talk) 05:57, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

Authorship Section
The Authorship section needs to either have citations or it should be deleted entirely. There are a number of questionable and unverified claims in there, e.g. "The general assumption is that Solomon was a part of the authorship to some extent, but that the book was not solely his work." Whose general assumption? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.188.5.65 (talk) 05:44, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

No critical scholar believes that Solomon wrote or collected any of the proverbs. The Authorship sections is filled with apologetic nonsense. WjtWeston (talk) 18:00, 16 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia is not about only one view. What you call "apologetic nonsense" differs from "critical scholars", but both views are promoted by published scholars. For Wikipedia, that is enough. Pete unseth (talk) 11:58, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Plenty of people believe in the authorship by Solomon. It is taken for granted by every Baptist I've ever known. I don't think you'd like their opinion of "critical scholars." 99.0.37.176 (talk) 22:31, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

It is not just Baptists. Any Orthodox Jew, scholar or not, will adhere to the traditional teaching that Solomon wrote at least all of Proverbs up to ch. 22. And although I don't have citations at the top of my head, I do recall references to fairly modern scholars who believe that at least ch. 10 is the ancient core of the book, proverbs written by Solomon himself, the rest of the book being styled after and formed around that core, even when admitting either later influences or influences from the Instruction of Amenemope. 68.166.189.32 (talk) 18:46, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

year of writing
I can't find anything in the article about the year of authorship. Has this been determined? I ask because for the article Scientia potentia est, it would be great to know when the phrase was first used... --helohe (talk)  10:27, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

You won't find anything on a "year of authorship" because there are so many different layers. Chapter 10, for example, is accepted as pre-exilic even by people who do not accept that it was written by Solomon himself. Chapters 1-9 are clearly later, as are the higher numbered chapters.

So with so many different layers, how do you assign a "year of authorship"? What meaning would it really have? 68.166.189.32 (talk) 18:50, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

James L. Crenshaw as critical scholar within this page.......
James L. Crenshaw is listed on this page within a majority of critical scholars as a reference within this page. A page was created for Crenshaw along with Michael V. Fox and Roland E. Murphy also listed within this majority of critical scholars. The James L. Crenshaw article has been tagged for deletion within 7 days of October 6th with the below information. If the page needs to remain rather than have a red letter James L. Crenshaw listed on the Book of Proverbs, the information is listed below. Non-notable author. No evidence of coverage in independent reliable sources. All references are to his own work. If you can address this concern by improving, copyediting, sourcing, renaming or merging the page, please edit this page and do so. You may remove this message if you improve the article or otherwise object to deletion for any reason. Although not required, you are encouraged to explain why you object to the deletion, either in your edit summary or on the talk page. If this template is removed, do not replace it.
 * It is proposed that this article be deleted because of the following concern:

The article may be deleted if this message remains in place for seven days, i.e., after 03:09 on 13 October.

All Worlds (talk) 07:15, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Contradictions
I think the idea of "contradictions" is too strong here. The two commands about how to answer a dolt/fool are not so much a contradiction but a way of showing that dealing with a dolt/fool is hopeless, no matter what you try. The material about whether wisdom is divine or taught does not seem to be a contradiction, but showing another facet. The two are not posed as contradicting each other. I am interested in changing the section on "contradiction", but want to listen to others first. Pete unseth (talk) 13:34, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

The explanation for the 'contradiction' I heard was rather different: it was that the author of both adjacent proverbs was fully aware of the contradiction, and did it deliberately. But this in turn makes sense only if you also know that although, grammatically, these and many proverbs are stated as sweeping generalizations, in fact, they are not: it is a 'meme' of Wisdom Literature of the time that part of the wisdom is to know when to apply the generalization, when not to. Then the whole point becomes that sometimes, it is Proverbs 26:4 that applies, sometimes it is 26:5.

Apparently the LXX translator did not agree with this, since he translated the two with a difference between them that removes the contradiction: in 26:4, it refers to during the fool's folly, in 26:, it refers to immediately after. So in his interpretation, the idea of both proverbs is to wait until the fool is finished raging, and then answer him and refute him so that his dangerously false idea is not allowed to stand and do harm to others. 68.166.189.32 (talk) 18:57, 20 April 2016 (UTC)


 * It was simply what I found in the source I used. I don't think it really matters all that much, but I imagine it's inevitable that a collection of wise folk sayings is going to end up with a few contradictions ("birds of a feather flock together" vs "opposites attract", for example).PiCo (talk) 11:15, 1 October 2013 (UTC)


 * There are books which are anthologies of folk sayings (like "Eastern North Carolina Sayings," by Philip Beaman). Solomon was not gathering examples of sayings that people in his culture were saying, he had a specific purpose and theme to his writing. These were proverbs of Solomon, not proverbs compiled by Solomon. These "contridictions" come from a presuppositional understanding of this book as unorganized sayings. The constant use of "conradition" shows that this article has this bias. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fishepat000 (talk • contribs) 20:08, 31 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Agreed - poetic composition, not contradiction. "These seemingly contradictory verses are actually a common form of parallelism found in the Old Testament, where one idea builds upon another. Verse 26:4 warns against arguing with a fool on his own terms, lest we stoop to his level and become as foolish as he is. Verse 5, on the other hand, tells us that there are times when a fool has to be addressed so that his foolishness will not go unchallenged. Our answer in this case is to be one of reproof, showing him the truth so he might see the foolishness of his words in the light of reason." Ieraxis (talk) 16:50, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Personification of Wisdom
PiCo has inserted material on the personification of Wisdom that represents only one view, and not a widely held view. Did God "acquire" wisdom? And what does the wife of chapter 31 have to do with the concept of "goddess" in the same paragraph. I got lost on these.

Wouldn't it be more useful to a broader audience to list what interpretations have been followed? For example, Christians have traditionally understood Wisdom in chapter 8 in a Trinitarian sense. How have traditional Jewish scholars viewed Wisdom in chapter 8.

What is the best way forward on this, a way of wisdom, not personal attacks or narrow agendas? Pete unseth (talk) 20:37, 29 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Sorry Pete, I didn't notice your comments here. Maybe I've taken that bit out again? I'm not sure which section of the article you mean, anyway - if you mean the way I slashed a lot of material from the last section, that was because I thought it was going on far too long about a single verse - I hope the para I kept gives the nub of why Proverbs 8 is important to the development of Christianity. PiCo (talk) 11:12, 1 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Just had a quick look at the interpretation of Lady Wisdom in Christianity as given by our article. It does say: "Christianity ... adopted these ideas and applied them to Jesus: the Epistle to the Colossians calls Jesus "...image of the invisible God, first-born of all creation...", while the Gospel of John identifies him with the creative word ("In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God"). In other words, Lady Wisdom in later 2nd Temple Judaism became an intermediary between God and man, and also became identified with the creative Word, the Christ; the Holy Spirit comes from a different place, the Hebrew ruah or "spirit of God". But yes, it did indeed play a role in the development of the Trinitarian idea). PiCo (talk) 11:24, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

From a reading comprehension stand point, any word like "Wisdom" should have the hebrew, greek, latin word equivalents, or a link to the article about Wisdom Tradition if indeed there was one. Just throwing it out there is not enough. I favor the hypothesis that post-exilic Judaism was heavily influenced by Zoroastrianism, whose god, Mazda, literally means "wise/wisdom".2605:6000:1800:6D:5576:96D3:6A36:D8C2 (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 22:22, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Introduction
In the introduction paragraph, between the second last and last sentence, there is a sudden switch from impersonal to personal use of the word "wisdom": "the beginning of wisdom" (impersonal) vs. "her role" etc. (personal). This made me "stumble" while reading. Georg Stillfried (talk) 09:56, 7 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I agree with this assessment. It is true that Proverbs refers to wisdom as "her," or "she." It is confusing to readers of this article who are not familiar with this. Patrick Fisher 20:11, 31 August 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fishepat000 (talk • contribs)

Inclusion in the Biblical canon
The current article states, "Proverbs was almost excluded from the Bible." But it gives no citation. Some modern scholars may wonder how it was chosen, but I don't know of ancient disputes on this. Anybody have evidence that would allow this thought to be retained in the article? Pete unseth (talk) 18:16, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

I have no idea, and I am not even sure which Biblical canon is used here. The Christian one? The article mentions that in the 4th-century, the Book of Proverbs was a favorite source of Arian Christians to use against their opponents.

Lets see what we have in other articles on the development and controversies of the Christian canon:
 * The Bryennios List, dating to the 1st or early 2nd century lists Proverbs among its 27 canonical books.
 * Melito's canon, dating to the 2nd century, also includes it. This canon excludes the Book of Esther, and seems to include the Book of Wisdom.
 * Marcion of Sinope's canon, dating to the 2nd century, apparently excluded it. However, Marcion rejected the entire Old Testament, as he believed that the god mentioned there was not the Christian God.
 * Origen's canon, dating to the 3rd century, includes the Proverbs. It excludes the Twelve Minor Prophets: the Book of Hosea, the Book of Joel, the Book of Amos, the Book of Obadiah, the Book of Jonah, the Book of Micah, the Book of Nahum, the Book of Habakkuk, the Book of Zephaniah, the Book of Haggai, the Book of Zechariah, and the Book of Malachi. Origen considered canonical the Letter of Jeremiah, and mentions the Book or Books of Maccabees without a clear indication of their canonicity, or number.
 * It is unclear whether the First Council of Nicaea, dating to the 4th century, made any decisions concerning the Biblical canon. There is a claim by Jerome, that the Council debated the canonicity of the Book of Judith and decided in its favor. Jerome may have invented the debate, which is not mentioned in any other source.
 * The canon promoted by Roman Emperors Constantine the Great and Constans, dating to the 4th century, is disputed and may not have survived. The closest approximates to it may be the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus. Both apparently considered Proverbs canonical. The Codex Vaticanus differs from Sinaiticus by excluding 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, 3 Maccabees, 4 Maccabees, and the Prayer of Manasseh.
 * The canon of the Council of Laodicea, dating to the 4th century, includes Proverbs. It also includes the Book of Baruch and the Letter of Jeremiah. It excludes the Book of Revelation and apparently condemned the Book of Enoch. The authenticity of this canon is disputed, though it matches the canon endorsed by Cyril of Jerusalem.
 * Athanasius of Alexandria's canon, dating to the 4th century, includes Proverbs. It excludes the Book of Esther.
 * Jerome's canon, dating to the 4th century, includes Proverbs. His canon may have been endorsed by his employer, Pope Damasus I, though there are insufficient mentions of this endorsement in primary sources.
 * Augustine of Hippo's canon, dating to the 4th century, makes no specific mention of Proverbs. He may have included Proverbs in the "five books of Solomon" which it mentions. Augustine got his canon approved by the Synod of Hippo (393), and two Councils of Carthage (397, 419). His canon was reportedly accepted as authoritative by Pope Innocent I and Pope Gelasius I. Innocent's canon may have excluded the Epistle to the Hebrews, but seems to mention no dispute over the Old Testament books. The Decretum Gelasianum, a canon attributed to Gelasius, is a full copy of Augustine's canon. Its authenticity is disputed and it may be a 6th-century forgery, attributed to a long-dead Pope.
 * The canon used by the Codex Alexandrinus, dating to the 5th century, includes Proverbs, along with the entire Septuagint.
 * The Canons of the Apostles, dating to the 7th-century, but probably based on earlier works, apparently includes Provers.

And that is about it for every major canon from the 1st millennium. Most of the others mentioned in the relevant articles are copies or near-copies. I don't see much opposition to Proverbs in any of them. Dimadick (talk) 09:03, 11 December 2016 (UTC)