Wisdom Tradition – See with New Eyes
Education
Moving from the world of nature to the human world, the wisdom literature of the old-world Middle East reveals wisdom as significant to education. There seem to have been at least three ways in which this took place, through temple schools, the royal courts, and via fathers to sons.
Research into the temple schools of the old-world Middle East has shed some light about the wisdom-based education of the time. The temple schools, as the name indicates, were attached to temples, and therefore had a particular religious identity. From his research, however, McKane has concluded that we should not think that temple schools dealt only in instruction related to the religious cultus of the nation. In the Egyptian temple schools, for instance, there seems to have been a amalgam of learning. Comparing them to schools founded by cathedrals in the Middle Ages, which were grammar schools and not seminaries, McKane writes that there “is no reason to suspect that the temple schools of the ancient Near East were less devoted to the basic elements of academic discipline…” (Prophets and Wise Men, p. 37).
Evidently, both religious and secular education took place. But it seems not to have been a universal education. Recruits came from the top layers of society, such as children from the royal courts, from courtiers’ families, from the homes of royal officials or temple personnel, from the wealthier families, and suchlike. The elite only need apply.
Of Egyptian, Babylonian, and Sumerian temple schools, McKane has concluded that, although they educated priests for the temple and scholars for sacred learning, “they provided recruits for the learned professions in general and notably for the higher offices of state” (p. 39). Egyptian and Sumerian schools trained “scribes” in such wisdom as the schools offered for entry into administrative, economic, and other positions vital to running a country.
In Babylon, two types of schools seem to have existed, one was called “the table house,” where reading and writing were taught. The other was “the house of wisdom,” a school of higher education, where, presumably, sons of the elite were “seated on benches of stone without backs, studied mathematics and astronomy, medicine, magic arts, and theology and all the varied branches of ‘the learning and tongues of the Chaldeans’ (Dan. 1:4)” (Ibid). In Prophets and Wise Men, McKane spends some time showing how this “throws some light on the problem of the relationship between s?per and h?k?m in the setting of the Old Testament” (Ibid, p. 40). (See also: Wisdom Words.)the wisdom tradition itself had deep roots in the royal courts and for purposes of domestic and international governance
The royal courts, of course, had their pick of young men from elite families who showed aptitude and potential to serve as public officials, and it seems to have been normative for the chosen ones, those who would enter service in a royal court, to learn wisdom through tutoring or apprenticeships.
In a long section on Egyptian wisdom “Instruction” that details the normative apprenticeship of that state’s public officials, McKane writes in his very detailed book Proverbs that this Instruction is “an educational manual for one who is to hold high public office…” “I would suggest that the least tendentious way of describing this corpus of teaching is to say that it establishes the conditions of effective and successful statesmanship in Egypt. If an official is to succeed in affairs and become a weighty statesman, these are the conditions to which he must attend and give respect” (pp. 52, 56).
Other scholars concur. In Wisdom in Israel, in a section that compares similarities of what he calls the “didactic traditions” of various old-world cultures of the Ancient Near East, von Rad writes that many of the proverbs and sections in the Book of Proverbs concern kings and qualities requisite in officials serving in the royal court. In fact, these particular proverbs “actually presuppose conditions at court.” Further, they indicate “the royal court as a place where wisdom was traditionally nurtured. This would correspond exactly to what we know of the courts of Egypt and Mesopotamia” (Wisdom in Israel, p. 15).
This is just the tip of a vast mountain of scholarship dedicated to this important cross-cultural area of “wisdom literature” – a designation used to represent certain literary genres of old-world Middle East cultures. Within these genres there arose – as planned editorial processes carried out by professional scribes under the auspices of royal courts – texts that comprise some of the most ancient literature. Such texts quite likely indicate that the wisdom tradition itself had deep roots in the royal courts and for purposes of domestic and international governance It is this “lost” dimension of the tradition that The Wisdom Project focuses on.
Evidently, education in wisdom moved from elite settings into the broader culture, although I do not want to assume a top-down movement, as if instruction in wisdom was at some point in time strictly the purview of the elite. Apart from temple schools and royal courts, we know that wisdom was originally orally transmitted down the generations usually from father to son (occasionally from mothers), as instruction about life in the world, such as we see in later written form in the Book of Proverbs.
In this broader context, and to be brief, education in wisdom was designed to encourage the kind of responsible living that would put the young in harmonious agreement with the divine order that was assumed by old-world cultures to exist in the world. It usually contained proverbs and exhortations and emphasized concrete, practical instruction rather than hold up abstract ideals to follow. The instruction was meant to free one’s life of unnecessary difficulty and costly errors of judgment. As such, it emphasized right decision-making in everyday life based on insights that sages had gained from their investigations into the orderly processes of nature and through years of studied observation and experience of human behavior and interaction.sages were vital to a culture’s developing wisdom tradition and its role in education
In fact, sages were vital to a culture’s developing wisdom tradition and its role in education. By “using their powers of observation and the ability to think rationally,” writes Hebrew scholar Leo Perdue, “the sages sought to understand God, social institutions, and the moral life through their reflections on creation and human experience, including their own.” 1 Perdue also makes this helpful distinction. “Unlike prophets who received the knowledge of God in revelatory states (e.g., standing in the council of Yahweh) or priests whose religious experiences included theophanies…, sages came to their understanding of God and the moral life through ways of knowing that included memory, sense perception, reason, experience, and reflection.” 2
Witherington, writing about wisdom and experiences that are common to humanity, puts it this way. “The sages dealt with and drew deductions from the repeatable patterns and moral order of ordinary life, both human life and the life of the broader natural world. For the most part they were trying to explain how God’s people should live when God is not presently intervening and when there is no late and particular oracle from God to draw on” (pp. 9-10).
Much that is found in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes arose from studied observation over time, as sages derived learned lessons from both the created order of the world and human behavior in the world, to gain understanding of what has been called the “act-consequence connection.” 3 Simply put, people reap, what they sow. A few examples? For lack of guidance, a nation falls; do not love sleep or you will grow poor; do not speak to a fool, for he will scorn the wisdom your words (Proverbs 11:14; 20:13; 23:9).
Gerhard von Rad calls this kind of learned wisdom “experiential knowledge,” noting that every old-world nation with a culture “devoted itself to care and literary cultivation of this experiential knowledge” (Wisdom in Israel, p. 4). “No one,” he reminds us, “would be able to live even for a single day without incurring appreciable harm if he could not be guided by wide practical experience,” which teaches us to understand events in our surroundings, to foresee the reactions of others, to apply our own unique resources at the right point, “to distinguish the normal from the unique and much more besides” (Ibid, p. 3). This is the stuff of wisdom education, and, over time, sages’ insights were collected and organized into forms of written instruction and used to educate the young about wise, practical decision-making in virtually every area of life in the old-world, which of course have their counterparts today.
As David Ford points out, wisdom was taken for granted as “the crown of education,” as what was “most desired in a parent, a leader, a counselor, a teacher” (Christian Wisdom, p. 1). Much of the instruction is artfully crafted in pithy sayings, as in the form of proverbs, maxims, or adages intentionally brief in length, compact in meaning, easily intelligible to their audience, and often carrying a graphic kick – “Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise (Prov. 6:6). Practicing moral conduct, cultivating virtue and prudent behavior, learning principles for living well, understanding the consequences of one’s choices, and recognizing contrasts, such as between the wise and the foolish, the just and the unjust, the good and the bad, are frequent topics of instruction.
I noted a few examples in part one. Here are several more for your felicitation, all from the Book of Proverbs: Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth (10:4). The man of integrity walks securely, but he who takes crooked paths will be found out (10:9). There is deceit in the hearts of those who plot evil, but joy for those who promote peace (12:20). A heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones (14:30). Better a patient man than a warrior, a man who controls his temper than one who takes a city (16:32). He who answers before listening – that is his folly and his shame (18:13). The first to present his case seems right, till another comes forward and questions him (18:17). “It’s no good, it’s no good!” says the buyer; then off he goes and boasts about his purchase (20:14). Like a bad tooth or a lame foot is reliance on the unfaithful in times of trouble (25:19). As a door turns on its hinges, so a sluggard turns on his bed (26:14).
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