For more than a generation, Rabbi Michael L. Munk, as a sidelight to his busy schedule of educational and communal work, has fascinated audiences with his learned and provocative lectures on the Hebrew alphabet. In the process of opening eyes and raising eyebrows, he has convinced countless people that his contention is true: the Hebrew alphabet abounds in scholarly and mystical meaning. He has developed and proven a profound thesis. The alphabet -- if correctly understood -- is a primer for life. Ethical conduct, religious guidance, philosophical insights, all are nestled in the curls, crowns, and combinations of the Hebrew letters. This is one of those rare books that is both interesting and profound, learned and readable. The wisdom and compassion of the author is evident in those subtle ways that do not intrude on the reader, but give him the satisfaction of knowing that a rich, warm, productive lifetime of experience is flavoring the text.
When, if ever, should lying be permitted? If you've damaged a person's reputation unfairly, can the damage be undone? Is a person who sells weapons responsible for how those weapons are used? if the fetus is not a life, what is it? How, as an adult, can one carry out the command to honor one's parents when they make unreasonable demands? What are the nine biblical challenges a good person must meet? What do the great Jewish writings of the last 3,500 years tell us about these and all other vital questions about our lives? Rabbi Joseph Telushkin has devoted his life to the search for answers within the teachings of Judaism. In Jewish Wisdom, Rabbi Telushkin, the author of the highly acclaimed Jewish Literacy, weaves together a tapestry of stories from the Bible and Talmud, and the insights of Jewish commentators and writers from Maimonides, Rashi, and Hillel to Einstein, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Elie Wiesel. A richer source of crucial life lessons would be hard to imagine. Accompanying this extraordinary compilation is Teluslikins compelling commentary, which reveals how these texts continue to instruct and challenge Jewsand all people concerned with leading ethical livestoday As he discusses these texts, Rabbi Telushkin addresses issues of fundamental interest to modern readers: how to live with honesty and integrity in an often dishonest world; how to care for the sick and dying; how to teach children to respect both themselves and others, how to understand and confront such great tragedies as antisemitism. and the Holocaust; what God wants from humankind. Within Jewish Wisdom's ninety chapters the reader will find extended sections illuminating Jewish perspectives on sex, romance, and marriage, what kind of belief in God a Jew can have after the Holocaust, how to use language ethically, the conflicting views of the Bible and Talmud on the death penalty, and much, much more. Jewish Wisdom adds a new dimension to the many widely read contemporary books that retell the stones and reveal the essence of classic religious and secular literature. Possibly the most far-ranging volume of stories and quotations from Jewish texts, Jewish Wisdom will itself become a classic, a book that not only has the capacity to transform how you view the world, but one that well might change how you choose to live your life.
Wisdom in Classical and Biblical Tradition begins with the recognition that modern culture emerged from a synthesis of the legacies of ancient Greek civilization and the theological perspectives of the Jewish and Christian scriptures. Part of what made this synthesis possible was a shared outlook: a common aspiration toward wholeness of understanding that refused to separate knowledge from goodness, virtue from happiness, cosmos from polis, and divine authority from human responsibility. This wholeness of understanding, or wisdom, featured prominently in both classical and biblical literatures as an ultimate good. Michael Legaspi has two central aims. The first is to explain in formal terms what wisdom is. Though wisdom involves matters of practical judgment affecting the life of the individual and the community, it has also been identified with an understanding of the world and of the ultimate realities that give meaning to human thought and action. In its traditional form, wisdom was understood to govern intellectual, social, and ethical endeavors. His second aim is to analyze figures and texts that have yielded and shaped the traditional understanding of wisdom. The book examines accounts of wisdom within foundational texts that range from the period of Homer to the destruction of the Second Temple. In doing so, it explains why the search for wisdom remains an important but problematic endeavor today.
In this exploration of Jewish wisdom during the Hellenistic period, internationally renowned scholar John J. Collins examines the books of Sirach and the Wisdom of Solomon, the Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides, and the recently discovered Qumran Sapiential A text from the Dead Sea Scrolls - offering one of the first such examinations of this text in print. This commentary is a compelling analysis of these important texts and their continuing traditions.
Sensitive to both literary form and theological content, Derek Kidner introduces Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes, explaining their basic character and internal structure. He also summarizes and evaluates the wealth of modern criticism focused on each book. Looking at all three books together, Kidner shows how their many voices compare, contrast and ultimately give a unified view of life.
It can be a challenge to understand the Hebrew Bible’s wisdom literature and how it relates to biblical history and theology, but John L. McLaughlin makes this complicated genre straightforward and accessible. This introductory-level textbook begins by explaining the meaning of wisdom to the Israelites and surrounding cultures before moving into the conventions of the genre and its poetic forms. The heart of the book examines Proverbs, Job, Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes), and the deuterocanonical Ben Sira and Wisdom of Solomon. McLaughlin also explores the influence of wisdom throughout the Old Testament and in the New Testament. Designed especially for beginning students—and based on twenty-five years of teaching Israel’s wisdom literature to university students—McLaughlin’s Introduction to Israel’s Wisdom Traditions provides an informed, panoramic view of wisdom literature’s place in the biblical canon.
The publication of the King James version of the Bible, translated between 1603 and 1611, coincided with an extraordinary flowering of English literature and is universally acknowledged as the greatest influence on English-language literature in history. Now, world-class literary writers introduce the book of the King James Bible in a series of beautifully designed, small-format volumes. The introducers' passionate, provocative, and personal engagements with the spirituality and the language of the text make the Bible come alive as a stunning work of literature and remind us of its overwhelming contemporary relevance.
Craig G. Bartholomew and Ryan P. O'Dowd provide an informed introduction to the Old Testament wisdom books Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Job. More than an introduction, however, this is a thoughtful consideration of the hermeneutical implications of this literature.
Through the ages, the book of Ecclesiastes (Qoheleth) has elicited a wide variety of interpretations. Its status as wisdom literature is secure, but its meaning for the religion of the Hebrew Bible and its heirs has been a matter of much debate. The debate has swung from claiming orthodoxy for the book to arguing that the message intended by its author is heterodox, in its entirety. There are a number of passages in the book that present difficulties for any comprehensive approach to the work. Martin Shields here fully acknowledges the heterodox nature of Qoheleth's words but offers an orthodox reading of the book as a whole through the eyes of the author of the epilogue. After a survey of attitudes regarding wisdom in the Hebrew Bible itself, which serves as an orientation to the monograph as a whole, Shields provides a detailed study of the epilogue (Qoh 12:9-14), which he believes is the key to the reading of the remainder of the book. He then addresses various problematic texts in the book in light of this perspective, arguing that the book could originally have functioned as a warning to students against joining a wisdom movement that existed at the time of the book's composition. Qoheleth is presented as a true adherent of this movement, and the divergence of his words from the theism presented in the rest of the Hebrew Bible becomes the basis of the epilogue's critique. Finally, Shields proposes a historical context in which just this scenario may have arisen, showing that the desire of the writer of the epilogue is to correct a wayward wisdom tradition.
