Hebrew Personification Of Wisdom

This book examines the personification of Wisdom as a female figure - a central motif in Proverbs, Job, Sirach, Wisdom and Baruch. Alice M. Sinnott identifies how and why the complex character of Wisdom was introduced into the Israelite tradition, and created and developed by Israelite/Jewish wisdom teachers and writers. Arguing that by personifying Wisdom the authors of Proverbs responded to Israel's defeat by Babylon and the loss of Davidic monarchy, and by retrieving and transforming the Wisdom figure the authors of Sirach, Baruch and Wisdom responded to the spread of Hellenism and the potential loss of identity for Jews. Sinnott concludes that personified Wisdom functioned to reinterpret and transform the Israelite/Jewish tradition.

The volume publishes papers read at the ninth International Conference on the Deuterocanonical Books, Budapest, 2012. The title of the conference and the issuing volume covers an, on the one hand, extremely important and, on the other hand, regrettably neglected aspect particularly of the ancient Jewish and Christian traditions. Traditional manifestations of both Judaism and Christianity are predominantly masculine theological constructions. Despite their harsh masculine orientation, however, neither Judaism nor Christianity lacks elaboration on the female principle. When an ancient author chooses female imagery in order to make his message more emphatic, the female body as such forms an integral part of their metaphors. The contributions in this volume explore this phenomenon within the literature of early Judaism, and within its broad environments.

A comprehensive introduction to ancient wisdom literature, with fascinating essays on a broad range of topics. The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Wisdom Literature is a wide-ranging introduction to the texts, themes, and receptions of the wisdom literature of the Bible and the ancient world. This comprehensive volume brings together original essays from established scholars and emerging voices to offer a variety of perspectives on the “wisdom” biblical books, early Christian and rabbinic literature, and beyond. Varied and engaging essays provide fresh insights on topics of timeless relevance, exploring the distinct features of instructional texts and discussing their interpretation in both antiquity and the modern world. Designed for non-specialists, this accessible volume provides readers with balanced coverage of traditional biblical wisdom texts, including Proverbs, Job, Psalms, and Ecclesiastes; lesser-known Egyptian and Mesopotamian wisdom; and African proverbs. The contributors explore topics ranging from scribes and pedagogy in ancient Israel, to representations of biblical wisdom literature in contemporary cinema. Offering readers a fresh and interesting way to engage with wisdom literature, this book: Discusses sapiential books and traditions in various historical and cultural contexts Offers up-to-date discussion on the study of the biblical wisdom books Features essays on the history of interpretation and theological reception Includes essays covering the antecedents and afterlife of the texts Part of the acclaimed Wiley Blackwell Companions to Religion series, the Companion to Wisdom Literature is a valuable resource for university, seminary and divinity school students and instructors, scholars and researchers, and general readers with interest in the subject.

God is Not Alone will challenge your views of what you thought you knew about the Bible and Christianity. It is a wide-ranging scholarly exposition of the divine feminine, drawing on numerous ancient Christian and pre-Christian texts to deliver its central message: that throughout Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, God is not alone, but is accompanied by a Mother-Goddess, the Holy Spirit, personified as Wisdom. While examining the roots of the divine feminine, this book tackles many aspects of femininity throughout the Bible, beginning with a new interpretation of the creation story where men are made in the image of God and women of His Wife. It is who She is that this book is ultimately about. The author, Marianne Widmalm, clearly illustrates the original feminine nature of the Holy Spirit, lost in translation from the Hebrew texts. By demonstrating the influence of the early Canaanites, Mary Magdalene, the Shekinah, the Holy Spirit and the role of women in the development of the Church in the first centuries, the author weaves together disparate texts that point us back to the goddess Asherah, and how She is one and the same as the Holy Spirit and Wisdom personified. The survival of the divine feminine is also shown through the Kabbalah and Apocryphal texts that drew from the Wisdom texts in the Hebrew Scriptures. Most significantly, according to numerous early church fathers, Jesus himself called the Holy Spirit as his "Mother" in, what the author argues, could be the first written Gospel. Additionally, the author explores key doctrinal issues faced by the early Church Fathers such as baptism with oil representing the Holy Spirit; the original role of women as deaconesses; as well as the development of the concept of the Trinity. This idea that God is three-in-one provides a key framework for understanding the marginalisation of the divine feminine. Step-by-step, assertions of sexism in the Bible are stripped away and the reader is returned to the original divine balance of the feminine and masculine that was lost through centuries of church doctrine and translations from Hebrew and Aramaic, to Greek and English. This provocative work is essential reading for anyone interested in first century Christianity as well as Judaism, the early Hebrews, Biblical research, Goddess Spirituality, the origins of Gnosticism, and the theological role and true nature of the Holy Spirit.

This is a nonsectarian guide for students undertaking their first systematic study of the Bible, giving information on archaeological data and historical background, and providing material on the date, authorship, and theological content of each book of the Old and New Testaments.

This volume contends that the Gospel of John presents the most thorough and robust Wisdom Christology of all the New Testament books. Wisdom Christology—the christological concept that applies the roles, characteristics, and functions of God’s personified wisdom to the man Jesus Christ—is displayed to be skillfully interwoven throughout all twenty-one chapters of the Fourth Gospel, starting with the famous prologue. In response to the prevailing tendency among interpreters to project postbiblical understandings of Jesus from the fourth- and fifth-century church councils back into the Gospel of John, this volume shows that a more fitting context emerges from Jewish Wisdom literature. By situating the Johannine Jesus in his first-century Jewish context, readers can appreciate John’s commitment to monotheism and Jesus’ role as the Father’s highly empowered human agent, fully embodying Lady Wisdom.

This creates a Christian theology of wisdom for the present day, in discussion with two sets of conversation-partners: The writers of the 'wisdom literature' in ancient Israel and the Jewish community in Alexandria; and the philosophers and thinkers of the late-modern age, among them Derrida, Levinas, Kristeva, Ricoeur, and Arendt.