Borg Summary

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Philosophy 171 Professor McCulloch Paper #2 4-15-10 Lauren Gillott Chapter 7: Reading Israel’s Wisdom Again. Borg begins this chapter by introducing the wisdom literature, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job. He states that this literature is where the reader encounters the dailiness of life in ancient Israel. These wisdom books are found in the third division of the Bible called the Writings, which is an assortment of books dating primarily from the postexilic period. Borg explains that the wisdom books are hard to date because they make no reference to historical events contemporary with them. In fact, they do not even mention any of Israel’s past, so history is obviously not one of the wisdom books concerns. Borg states that Israel’s wisdom has often been associated with King Solomon, who reigned in the 10th century B.C. Ecclesiastes claims King Solomon as its author, and Proverbs is attributed to him, but scholars generally agree that these books do not come from the time of Solomon. Borg claims that because of this the connection is merely traditional and has nothing to do with historical significance. Most scholars agree that the wisdom literature should be dated to the postexilic period that began in 539 B.C. Proverbs is generally dated around 500 B.C., Ecclesiastes in the third century B.C., and Job around the exilic/postexilic time. Borg explains that during these postexilic centuries, the Jewish people were under political control of the Persian and Hellenistic Empires, and they did not regain their independence until the time of the Maccabees in 164 B.C. The Jewish life centered around the temple in Jerusalem, and they had no king since they were a province in a foreign empire. During this time, the Jewish people’s authority gravitated towards the temple, and they slowly became a ‘temple state’ and a ‘theocracy’, a society ruled by God through

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