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The Tree of Life: An Exploration of Biblical Wisdom Literature (Anchor Bible Reference Library)

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Murphy is still considered one of the leading scholars in the study of Wisdom literature, and this brief introduction proves why. Murphy gives a satisfying and stimulating introduction to biblical Wisdom literature (including Sirach and Wisdom of Solomon) as well as treatments on Wisdom intertextuality, theology, and the metaphor of Woman Wisdom. However, the layout of the book - moving updates to separate appendices - makes it cumbersome to read, and Murphy's methodology leaves something to be desired. All in all, this is an invaluable resource for lay readers and those without an extensive background in Wisdom studies, but the more advanced scholar will probably be disappointed in this work.

The wisdom literature of the Old Testament is an engaging and important aspect of Old Testament studies, yet one that is not always well understood or fully appreciated. Roland E. Murphy, a Catholic scholar who has devoted his life to the study and exposition of that wisdom literature, has provided an informed, balanced, and useful volume that summarizes the results of that lifetime of study. The third edition is an expansion in the form of an added supplement, the Millennium Supplement, which interacts with developments in the field of wisdom scholarship since the publication of the two previous editions. The aim of his study is to survey the biblical quest for wisdom, what that quest entails, and how the wisdom literature is a part of and converses with the rest of the Old Testament (x).

Murphy's book is organized into nine chapters. The first chapter is an introduction, which treats preliminary issues such as classifying wisdom literature, identifying the biblical books that belong to that class, speculating on the identity of the Israelite sages, and discerning the language and literary forms the wisdom writers employed. The next five chapters examine the biblical wisdom books themselves: Proverbs, Job, Qoheleth, Sirach, and the Wisdom of Solomon. The latter two wisdom books are deuterocanonical, and scholars can appreciate Murphy's Catholic perspective, which enables him to include these books that make a valuable contribution to Israelite wisdom. The seventh chapter is an investigation of supposed wisdom influence on other Old Testament literature. The eighth chapter considers the theological message of the wisdom literature and how it relates to the deuteronomistic and prophetic corpora of the Old Testament. The last chapter is an analysis of Lady Wisdom, her literary characteristics, her theological import, and her identity as female. An appendix on Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Hellenistic wisdoms and their influence on the biblical wisdom literature completes the main text, while the two supplements, designed for advanced students and scholars, engage more recent and technical discussion on wisdom studies. Overall, the book is well written and lucid, and Murphy tries to expound the Israelite wisdom as candidly and thoughtfully as possible.

His introduction makes clear that biblical wisdom literature should be limited to Proverbs, Job, Qoheleth, Sirach, and the Wisdom of Solomon. He postpones detailed discussion of wisdom influence on other Old Testament passages until chapter seven. He highlights the crucial fact that Israelite wisdom literature is concerned with what it means to be a human being in general. Therefore, one should not be surprised by the absence of distinctively Jewish themes, such as covenant, cult, and promises (1). While acknowledging the existence of sages in Israel and their role in the formulation and transmission of the wisdom tradition, Murphy cautions that the wisdom books themselves provide little information about the sages and that wisdom was also communicated in the context of family and the immediate community (3-5). Whether a professional class of sages or the core family unit was the more likely context for the development of wisdom tradition, nevertheless wisdom took on and was dressed in various structures and forms, examples of the former being parallelism and paronomasia, and examples of the latter being the saying and the admonition. On how to interpret wisdom - especially proverbs - Murphy offers two apt observations. First, proverbs were not mechanistic formulae for the working of the universe, i.e. they did not constitute a rigid and inflexible retributive theology. Therefore, each statement is not absolute truth; it is only relative (11). Second, and perhaps helping to explain the first, wisdom took account of and ultimately recognized the mysterious working of God, the fear of whom was the foundation of any true pursuit of wisdom (11).

Although there are only five wisdom books properly, Murphy is aware of and interacts with scholarship that looks for wisdom 'echoes' elsewhere in the Old Testament; and though he does not entirely dismiss the search for wisdom influence (see 107-108), he does encourage a careful and judicious approach. The main problem with discerning wisdom influence is the lack of methodological precision for what constitutes influence. Murphy delineates the three typical criteria scholars use to adduce influence (vocabulary, literary forms, and content) and says that even the presence of all three cannot demonstrate conclusively wisdom influence. The reason is that the sages did not have a monopoly on wisdom themes and literary forms; otherwise, their language would be jargon and unintelligible to common people (100). Murphy critiques the claims of wisdom influence in the Psalms, Deuteronomy, and Song of Songs. He believes that the clearest demonstration of wisdom influence is in certain Psalms - specifically 1, 32, 34, 37, 49, 112, and 128 (103). He also accepts that wisdom tradition may have influenced certain prophetic sayings, such as Isaiah 28.23-29 (100).

Whether one can attribute explicit wisdom influence to various parts of the Old Testament, one can nevertheless affirm with confidence that wisdom permeates the Old Testament and therefore must be a more integral element of its holistic theology than scholars have acknowledged until now. Murphy is not advocating a systematized biblical theology, as though there were a center of biblical theology (he does not believe there is one). Instead, he is saying that any biblical theology seeking to be faithful to the Old Testament itself must incorporate the wisdom literature and its tradition as a central part of the biblical witness and not as a peripheral one (112). Murphy lists four theological perspectives that wisdom offers: an understanding of reality, a search for order, creation theology, and the wisdom experience (112). He emphasizes that wisdom does not view reality ahistorically and that consequently it recognizes an organic relationship between people and the world. Yet it also takes account of the mysterious working of God, so that it can affirm on the one hand human free will and on the other the ultimate causality that is God (114). Murphy is skeptical that Israelite wisdom was, at its core, a search for order, like the Egyptian concept of ma`at (115-116). Instead, wisdom was about a dynamic relationship with the one God, who created the cosmos, imbued it with his presence and values, and who made human beings to fulfill their potential in sole orientation to God (120) Thus, the creation is as much a means of God's revelation as the Sinai covenant (122).

In his last chapter - that on Lady Wisdom - Murphy focuses on this literary character as a personification of wisdom. He doubts that she was a hypostasis in the later Hellenistic sense but rather thinks she was an integral part of God himself, an extension or communication of God (133). Lady Wisdom is intriguing because, on the one hand, she engages human beings to come to her, listen to her, and embrace her; on the other hand, she is a gift to be received from God. In fact, Murphy calls attention to several texts (notably Job 28 and Proverbs 8) that talk about how wisdom is inaccessible to humans and how only God knows where wisdom is located, with the result that only God can reveal her. When God grants wisdom to his people, what he grants to them is himself (147). This tension highlights the human and divine aspects that characterize the mystery of wisdom.

The prolegomena to wisdom studies and the theological nature of wisdom serve as the bookends for Murphy's book. In between are his analysis of the wisdom books proper, and again he detects a tension in the biblical witness. While Proverbs has a rather optimistic retributive theology, Murphy sees Job and Qoheleth as nuancing that perspective, as genuine questioning that is able to be part of Israel's faith (34). He sees Sirach as a traditionalist whose contribution consists in equating wisdom with the Torah, and he perceives thorough Hellenistic influence on the Wisdom of Solomon, which gives a perspective from the Diaspora. Murphy says that the Wisdom of Solomon teaches immortality, but he qualifies that assertion by saying that the author does not see immortality as a natural property of human beings, but as a gift received in relationship with God (86). Also, in regard to the connection between Proverbs and the Teaching of Amenemope, Murphy states that direct literary dependence, while possible, does not need to be maintained, as the Israelite writer shows his independence and the connection can be explained by the way in which ideas become common currency (24). As for the historicity of Job, Murphy prefers to see the story as legend, not history, and he thinks the speeches are polished literary accomplishments, not anything actually spoken by historical persons (35).

The structure of Murphy's book is both distracting yet helpful. The book would have been a more fluid read if Murphy had rewritten the book and wove into the fabric of each chapter material from the supplements. Such a re-working would also minimize the need to turn back and forth between pages. On the other hand, as Thomas Renz and Stephen Garfinkel observe, this structure allows the main text to focus on the elementary and principal issues, an approach that preserves readability for the student or intelligent lay-reader. The supplements, then, provide interested and able students, as well as scholars, with a more technical treatment.

Some reviewers, such as David Penchansky, disagree with Murphy's insistence that the biblical material should have a univocal witness, contending that Murphy does not allow for ideological perspectives of the text that cannot be harmonized or reconciled. Murphy does see tension within individual witnesses (e.g. Qoheleth) and within the wisdom corpus as a whole (e.g. Proverbs vis-à-vis Qoheleth). Still, he does not see a tension that is contradictory, but one that is creative and allows for a more coherent picture than many scholars assume. Also, Penchansky disapproves of Murphy's use of numerological indications in the text to reconstruct and interpret those texts (i.e. proposed emendations). While Penchansky is right that one has to be cautious when engaging in reconstructive exegesis (i.e. emending the texts and basing one's exegesis on the emendations), Murphy is only trying to make sense of and follow the indications that the text itself evinces and how they shed light on the author's compositional strategy and meaning. Overall, Murphy is conscientious and judicious in this enterprise.

Murphy does a good job of showing how the wisdom literature is a valid interpretation and expression of Israel's faith. He could be faulted for feeling the need to establish this validity by connecting wisdom to the concept of 'salvation history.' More likely Murphy is just trying to work in the generally established framework that scholars assume, and it is within that framework that he tries to challenge traditional assumptions. In this way, his goal is not an interpretive or schematic overhaul. The result is that Penchansky's critique, while a discrete observation, is slightly beside the point.

One place that Murphy did not bring out the fullness of the wisdom literature is in regard to form, i.e. how the form determines the function and performance of the saying or admonition, a very interesting area of study. More research needs to be devoted to this question.

One can read Murphy's book and walk away somewhat disappointed. The book is not exhaustive; it only addresses the major and most salient issues. But the purpose of the book was not to be comprehensive; its purpose was to pull together the main threads of Murphy's research into one place and give a readable account of the place of wisdom literature in Israelite thought and in Old Testament theology. If this was his goal - as it seems to have been - then Murphy succeeded admirably; and while not a particularly novel monograph, it is nonetheless a cogent, intelligent, and careful reference work that will be helpful to students and scholars for years to come.

Select Bibliography

Bland, David. Review of The Tree of Life: An Exploration of Biblical Wisdom Literature, first edition, by Roland E. Murphy. Interpretation 46/2 (Ap 1992): 183-84.

Garfinkel, Stephen P. Review of The Tree of Life: An Exploration of Biblical Wisdom Literature, second edition, by Roland E. Murphy. Hebrew Studies 41 (2000): 259-61.

Murphy, Roland E. The Tree of Life: An Exploration of Biblical Wisdom Literature, third edition. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2002.

Penchansky, David. The Tree of Life: An Exploration of Biblical Wisdom Literature, first edition, by Roland E. Murphy. Catholic Biblical Quarterly 55/1 (Ja 1993): 123-24.

Renz, Thomas. Review of The Tree of Life: An Exploration of Biblical Wisdom Literature, third edition, by Roland E. Murphy. Vetus Testamentum 54/4 (2004): 566-67.

Murphy's book is a very helpful introduction to an area of Biblical literature that has for some time been much-neglected among mainline Protestant seminary curricula and clergy. He gives careful analysis of the main issues in each of the books (Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Wisdom of Solomon & Ecclesiasticus or Ben Sirach) and indications of the variations among scholars in relation to these issues. His bibliography is helpful without being overwhelming. It is also helpful that the book includes two updates of the original 1990 publication, the latest in 2002. A helpful antidote to some of the Barthian-era scholarly cliches which were dismissive of the Wisdom tradition and its impact on the New Testament and church life in general.

Roland Murphy is an acclaimed scholar of biblical wisdom literature, but this introductory book is quite plodding and uninsightful. He's overly cautious throughout, and refrains from saying anything particularly pointed or definite. A lot of the time, he'll write, "theory 'A' is intriguing and there are evidences for and against," but not really say anything one way or another. His latter chapters on Wisdom's Echoes, Wisdom Literature and Theology, Lady Wisdom are especially insipid.

But I do give him credit for his chapters on Proverbs and Job. His explanation of the ending coda on the worthy wife was helpful, though I thought he could have gone further and made the obvious connection to Jesus. (That's another thing: he makes no Christological or New Testament connections. I guess it's to make the book as ecumenical [read: bland] as possible.) His analysis of Job as a corrective to a simplistic theology of retribution that one might get from a superficial reading of Proverbs was great. His chapter on Ecclesiastes (Qoheleth) was so-so. And I fell asleep several times reading his summaries of the two Apocraphal wisdom books.

His introductory chapter was also helpful. I found his sagely advice on pg. 10-11 especially good - "A proverb presents only a narrow slice of reality; much depends upon its context...What is needed is the proper context in which they are pertinent...The saying is not an absolute; it is relative." You basically can't read a proverb in isolation and apply it uncritically to all situations; this is the mistake Job's three friends made.

But all of this does not overcome how completely uninteresting his latter chapters were. I'm quite disappointed that for such a poetic topic, Murphy wrote a sleep-inducing prosaic textbook. This is a side note, but kudos for the book cover.