A typology of personified wisdom hymns

Biblical Theology Bulletin, Winter, 2004 by Nozomi Miura

Abstract

The author undertakes an evaluation and classification of those texts in First Testament Wisdom Literature which personify Wisdom in hymnic fashion. Such a classification may have value not only in itself, but it may he useful for understanding the nature of traditions known to writer of the Johannine Prologue. The author proposes a division of such hymns into the categories of "Hidden," "Accessible," and "Apocalyptic."

**********

My original purpose in examining Wisdom traditions was to seek the background for the Johannine Prologue and to see how various motifs and themes, especially the transformation and elaboration of the personified Wisdom, were taken up in the Prologue as a "hermeneutical construct" with unique appropriation (Sheppard: 13-18). The Johannine Logos was an end product in the trajectory of Jewish Wisdom traditions. Wisdom traditions in the Second Temple period exhibit enormous interest in the Primeval History (Genesis 1-11), especially the Creation Prologue of Genesis (Gen 1:1-2:4a). This remarkable attraction and theological reflection upon the creation story--along with diverse motifs and themes--ultimately influenced the Johannine Prologue, and eventually contributed to reframe the christological speculation in the Fourth Gospel.

Wisdom literature characteristically focuses on human life--how to cope with life, how to assure well-being, or how to master one's life--in the union of religion and ethics. It draws a combination of both folk traditions native to its own traditional culture (practical wisdom as in proverbs and folklore inherited in family, clan, and tribe) and the cosmopolitan concerns and educational traditions of the royal court. Deep within Wisdom literature are features designed to discern and to describe "order" in life, a search for order in the realm of experience and nature. Wisdom literature began to demonstrate a profound theological speculation on the role and nature of Wisdom in an abstract sense, exhibiting deep interest in the order of the world, and enthusiastically searching for the dynamic relationship between humans and nature, while not showing as much attention to salvation history as other parts of the First Testament. The development of the Wisdom tradition was fostered by the exilic and post-exilic experience and the strong forces of Hellenism. The traumatic national crisis inevitably intensified the search for the "meaning" of the Israelites' experience, reinforcing their awareness of theodicy, or a legitimation of God's way in the face of human suffering and evil. Wisdom literature in the Second Temple period is grounded by the profound need to reconstruct a meaningful cosmos or order of reality, presided over by the transcendent God, to which human beings can entrust and submit themselves. God is transcendent and absolutely beyond human comprehension: "God alone is one who creates, sustains, exists forever, and provides hope for salvation" (Perdue 1994: 327). But certainly the God of compassion reaches out for humans. Wisdom tradition, thus, centers around this basic understanding of God's benevolence and righteousness toward humans. In the Wisdom tradition, creation theology also became a "crucial category" in which people re-interpreted and re-formulated their faith, and in which the later rapproachment between biblical tradition and Hellenistic speculation was to be actualized (Zimmerli: 146-58; von Rad 2001: 441-53; Scobie: 43-48; Murphy 1996: 111-31; 1985: 3-11; 1978: 35-45; Terrien: 125-53).

The most prominent feature in the development of theological Wisdom is the personification of Wisdom (Blenkinsopp 1983: 151-82; Crenshaw: 80-88, 145-46, 168-70, 198-204; Murphy 1996: 133-49; von Rad 1972: 53-73, 144-76). Personification as a literary device is not unfamiliar in the First Testament, but the process was unique in its elaboration and expansion. This process is sometimes described as a movement toward "hypostasis"--in the sense that the personification represents an intermediate existence independent from Yahweh; but under the strict monotheistic context of Judaism in the Second Temple period, it is unlikely that the personification of Wisdom could be understood as a divine being separate from Yahweh. Wisdom could never fully become more than a personification or a divine attribute; rather, it expressed the active power of Yahweh, recognizing it as the embodiment of Yahweh's communicative power (Dunn: 163-76). Also, the Religionsgeschichtliche research has exhausted almost all the possibilities for the background of this female personification: an unnamed Assyrian or West Semitic goddess, the Canaanite goddess Ashtart or Asherah, the Egyptian Ma'at, the Hellenistic Isis, or a pre-gnostic deity (Blenkinsopp 1983: 161-66; Crenshaw: 66-67, 165-76; Murphy 1996: 115-16, 147, 161-62; 1995: 222-23). While a consensus has formed about the background role of Ma'at in the female Wisdom figure in Proverbs and the influence of Isis aretologies on Wisdom of Solomon 7-9, this could not fully account for the usage in the Jewish contexts.