Israel's Wisdom Literature

Dianne Bergant offers a fresh approach to all the wisdom books of the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Apocrypha: Job, selected psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Wisdom of Solomon, and Sirach. She concentrates on the final canonical from of each book and takes the "integrity of creation" as the basic interpretive perspective. This means, among other things, that the idea of the unity of humankind—indeed, the unity of all living things—lies at the heart of the approach.

Israel's Wisdom Literature is part of a four-volume set, "A Liberation-Critical Reading of the Old Testament," edited by Alice L. Laffey. The Pentateuch (1988) is now available and volumes on Deuternomic history and the prophets will be forthcoming.