Wisdom Discourse and Torah in Second Temple Judaism: Challenging the Integration Paradigm

Did wisdom literature in the Hebrew Bible develop over time from secular to religious, as many early modern scholars believed? Did it develop in reaction to historical events or out of conflict with other traditions, including Torah? In Wisdom Discourse and Torah in Second Temple Judaism, JiSeong James Kwon moves beyond this impasse by applying a discourse-critical method to intertextual readings of Proverbs, Ben Sira, the Wisdom of Solomon, Baruch, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Deuteronomy. Kwon’s study reveals that wisdom literature maintained an independent identity and theological orientation distinct from the legal traditions of the Torah. Rather than wisdom being subsumed into legal material, Jewish intellectual production remained pluralistic in form, genre, and theological orientation throughout the Persian and Hellenistic periods. JiSeong James Kwon is professor of Hebrew Bible at the Nehemiah Institute for Christian Studies in Seoul. He is the author of Scribal Culture and Intertextuality: Literary and Historical Relationships between Job and Deutero–Isaiah (2016) and coeditor of Between Wisdom and Torah (2023).