Wisdom in Israel

About this book

This classic text the last major work by the great Hebrew Bible scholar Gerhard von Rad has long been unavailable in North America. It is now being reissued in paperback from to satisfy the continuing demand for copies of the book. In brief the subject of von Rads study of Hebrew wisdom is Israels willingness to ground faith in encounter with the world as the creation of God. Those familiar with the authors Old Testament Theology will recall how he identified two great watersheds in the history of Israels thought. The first was the rise of the prophetic movement which occasioned a radical reinterpretation of Israels religious traditions as expressed in the earliest creedal formulations found in the Pentateuch. The second watershed which preceded the prophetic movement and was a basically different assessment of Israels relation to Yahweh was achieved by wisdom teachers at the start of the monarchy. This book studies this first and somewhat novel break with Israels older sacral traditions. Von Rad bases the study on a wide range of literary materials principally concerned with the books of Proverbs Job Ecclesiastes and the Wisdom of Ben Sirach. No finer introduction to the fundamental theological questions raised by the wisdom literature of Israel is available. Theology Today Gerhard von Rad was for many years Professor of Old Testament at the University of Heidelberg.