Second paragraph of third chapter:
It has long been traditional to group together certain books in the Bible under the heading ‘wisdom’: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Job, and in the Apocrypha, Sirach or the Wisdom of Jesus son of Sira (also known as Ecclesiasticus) and the Wisdom of Solomon.¹ All these books contain many short sayings or aphorisms, summing up the fruits of experience or giving explicit advice on how to behave. Many seem to reflect life in a village or small community, and draw ‘morals’ from activities such as farming:
The field of the poor may yield much food,
but it is swept away through injustice.
(Proverbs 13:23)Like vinegar to the teeth, and smoke to the eyes,
so are the lazy to their employers.
(Proverbs 10:26)The righteous know the needs of their animals,
but the mercy of the wicked is cruel.
Those who till their land will have plenty of food,
but those who follow worthless pursuits have no sense.
(Proverbs 12:10-11)Many of these proverbs are paralleled in other cultures, and could be seen as part of a popular understanding of the world, like our own ‘Too many cooks spoil the broth’ or ‘Look before you leap’.
¹ Excellent guides to biblical wisdom literature are J.L. Crenshaw, Old Testament Wisdom: An Introduction (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, third edition 2010), and Katharine J. Dell, Get wisdom, Get Insight: An Introduction to Israel’s Wisdom Literature (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2000).
A really fascinating, detailed book about the sacred text of Christianity and Judaism, starting at the very beginning with the compilation of the older parts of the Old Testament, and finishing with the most recent translations for today’s audience. Too much information to synthesis crispily, but it puts lots of things together that I had not really thought about, for instance:
- There are lots of manuscripts for the New Testament, but the accepted version of the Hebrew Old Testament largely depends on a single eleventh-century manuscript, the Leningrad Codex.
- Syriac, the first language into which the New Testament was translated, is the local version of Aramaic used in Edessa (now Şanlıurfa) – I had always been a bit confused about this. Aramaic was certainly Jesus’ native language, but he would have spoken the Galilean dialect.
- The Epistle of Barnabas and The Shepherd of Hermas were the two texts that came closest to getting into the New Testament without making it. The Letter to the Hebrews was the New Testament book that came closest to getting left out.
- The story of the woman taken in adultery is a very late addition to the Gospel of John. (Incidentally one of the few gospel passages that mentions writing.)
- Leaping forward, translating the Bible can be a crucial step in codifying a language; alongside Luther’s impact on German you could add Jurij Dalmatin’s impact on Slovenian, for instance.
I think even non-Christians will find quite a lot of interesting stuff in this account of one of the world’s most important literary artefacts. You can get it here.
This was my top unread book acquired in 2023 which is not by Ben Aaronovitch. Next in that list is Free: Coming of Age at the End of History, by Lea Ypi.
