Wisdom Has Built Her House [Paperback]

Silvia Schroer (Author), Linda M Maloney (Translator), William McDonough (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2000 | ISBN-10: 0814659349 | ISBN-13: 978-0814659342

"Silvia Schroer's stunning work on Wisdom breaks new ground, with its challenge to move beyond traditional and Western ways of hearing, reading, and interpreting the biblical text. The work calls all people to ethical responsibility for the sake of all creation. Written with grace, illumined by insight, and meticulously researched, this text is thoroughly engaging. It takes into account the images of personified wisdom as they appear in both the First and Second Testaments. "Schroer's work offers both the scholarly community and the general public a new and bold sense of great hope in the midst of the ongoing global struggle for solidarity: human beings with one another, and human beings with creation. Distinctly refreshing in its approach, depth, and breadth, this work needs to be a part of every scholarly conversation on Wisdom. It must be taken seriously by readers in general if transformation at its deepest level is to continue, and the reign of God celebrated." -- Carol J. Dempsey, University of Portland

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Foreword
The nine essays on personified Wisdom (Hebrew Hokm, Greek Sophia, Latin Sapientia) here collected for the first time were written over the course of ten years. The first appeared in 1986, while the two most recent were written for this book. Updatings are placed in each case at the beginning of the notes and marked with an asterisk (*). The sequence of chapters is not determined by their original dates of appearance, but by the originating dates of the biblical writings discussed. The theme of "Wisdom" has never let go of me through these years, even if it was not always central to my work. I, like many others, have my teacher Othmar Keel to thank for my interest in the figure of Wisdom. As early as 1974 he published a very intriguing little book on personified Wisdom in Proverbs 8:22-31, and it was he who was clever enough to detect the Ancient Near Eastern dove symbolism in the New Testament's accounts of Jesus' baptism at the Jordan as well. Further impulses were supplied me by the books of Claudia Camp and Max Kchler, and on the subject of Christian reception of Wisdom theology above all by Elisabeth Schssler Fiorenza. Teaching opportunities in Fribourg and Bern gave me further opportunites to demonstrate the connection between the image of women and the Wisdom image of God in Israel, and to discuss this with my students. The findings that resulted from this long process came together in lectures and articles, for example in my professional qualifying lecture on the theme "Wise Women and Counselors" (1989) and in a lecture on "Wisdom and Postexilic Monotheism" for the working group of Catholic women Old Testament scholars in Luzerne (1990). At the same time my principal professional occupation was directing adult biblical education programs for the Swiss Catholic Biblical Association. It was never difficult to awaken interest in this theme of personified Wisdom in parishes, deaneries, working groups, and above all in women's groups. There were unforgettable workshops, weekends, worship services, and women's retreats on the theme of Wisdom. An issue of the journal Bibel Heute, which I edited with other women on the theme of "Sophia God in the Image of a Woman," enjoyed such large sales in such a short time that it was reprinted and distributed as part of the documentation for the Women's World Day of Prayer. Conversations and Bible studies with many women and men in the Church and often with others marginal to the Church were a kind of touchstone for my scholarly exegesis on this theme. Above all they exerted a healthy pressure on me to reflect, always in new ways and concretely, about the context and goals of my biblical theology. That so many of the ideas first developed in the following essays have been taken up and transformed for pastoral uses is what pleases me most. I was also delighted by a very exciting debate on the plausibility of a Wisdom christology that Luise Schottroff and I enthusiastically conducted in January 1995 in Arnoldhain before a packed audience. The essay "The Spirit, Wisdom, and the Dove," which is not so easy for non-specialists to read, appeared first in a scholarly journal in Fribourg (Switzerland) and played an important role when the bishop of Rottenburg refused to grant me a teaching position for introductory Old and New Testament exegesis. I have never modified or corrected the theses and formulations defended in this essay, either in writing or orally, in order to reopen one of the portals to the empire of Catholic professorships. I am neither so presumptuous nor so nave as to believe that my reconstructions of the tradition-history of a symbol are absolutely "objectively" right or irrefutable. Many things are of course open to discussion, but not when (pretended) theological discussions are misused as bare instruments of power. That many Catholic women theologians are ready to bring the required tribute and to give in to the demands of bishops or Roman authorities in order to obtain a teaching position I take to be a very regrettable development, one that discredits feminist theology at its core, especially if it has any interest at all in being regarded as a special form of liberation theology. Wisdom has thus had a remarkably powerful direct and indirect influence on my life. She fills me even now with many images, with power for resistance, with commitment to justice, with laughter, and with eros.

There were many reasons for my decision to collect into one book a set of essays that, because of the different ways in which they originated, are not completely homogenous. For one thing, some of these essays appeared in books and journals that are very technical or have since gone out of print and are thus inaccessible to a broad audience. For another, none of these essays has become so outdated in the course of further discussion that it has by now earned its rest in the archives. I thank Mr. Bruno Kern for the inspiration for this book and for his advice as I was putting it together. I want to dedicate this little volume to my teacher and reliable friend Othmar Keel, who has guided my writings and activities in Wisdom for sixteen years, who has been unobtrusively interested in my path, and who has been like a firm rock in the dashing waves of my life. Sophia knows how much I owe to him!

Kniz, on the feast of Divine Wisdom, Pentecost 1996 Silvia Schroer

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: The Liturgical Press (January 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0814659349
• ISBN-13: 978-0814659342
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,501,020 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Check it out from the Library, but don't buy it., July 27, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Wisdom Has Built Her House (Paperback)

I checked this book out from the Library, and I just finished it today. I found this book hard to stick with and a couple times I just wanted to stop reading it all together. The author reapeated herself many time and kept noting that the view of Sophia was influnced by Egpytian Goddesses. But I did learn a little, so I guess it was worth my time.