Will Kynes introduces the book of Job by asking ‘What is the book of Job, and how does that affect how you read it?’ This question entails investigation into the book’s genre, for genre recognition provides a horizon of expectations which shape the reader’s perspective. Job has traditionally been read as Wisdom Literature, based on perceived similarities with Proverbs and Ecclesiastes in form, theme, and Sitz im Leben. However, this genre grouping leads to Job’s unwarranted separation from the rest of the canon, theological abstraction, and hermeneutical limitations. Job is an open and ambiguous text which might be placed in multiple genre groupings. Kynes surveys several of these (sifre emet, lament, exemplary sufferer texts, poetry, drama, controversy dialogue, history, epic, didactic narrative, Torah, prophecy, lawsuit, and apocalyptic), as well as some meta-generic readings (parody, citation, and polyphony). Given this diversity, and recognising that all readings are culturally contingent and only partially appropriate, he advocates a multiperspectival approach which draws insights from many directions.

This chapter concludes the volume’s second thematic strand (Space and Society) with an analysis of travel and trade in the age of William the Conqueror. Focusing on dynamics of commerce and communication, it traces the movement of goods and people across eleventh-century north-western Europe. The chapter begins with an introductory discussion of trade and commerce, before turning its attention to different kinds of landscapes and road networks. This is followed by a study of inland navigation and maritime travel that ranges broadly across the north-western European landscape.

Continuing the volume’s first thematic strand (Home and Away), this chapter is dedicated to eleventh-century England and the insular world. It begins by studying England, before analysing England’s connections with the territories and peoples of Wales and Ireland. This is followed by specific discussions of William the Conqueror’s dealings with the Welsh and the relationship between the Danelaw and northern England. The chapter then shifts its focus beyond Northumbria to investigate the history of the Normans in the north and their contacts with the Scots.

Continuing the volume’s second thematic strand (Space and Society), this chapter addresses the topic of Church and society in the age of William the Conqueror. It commences with a discussion of the Church in Normandy, before considering the corresponding situation across the Channel in England. It then develops a comparative perspective that draws attention to some fundamental issues surrounding the Anglo-Norman Church and its legacy, including William the Conqueror’s relationship with the episcopate and the Anglo-Norman monastic landscape, the importance of stability and authority, and the use of violence by and against members of the clergy.

The contribution by Peter T. H. Hatton is dedicated entirely to conceptions of reward and retribution in the wisdom literature. He considers how well-placed and sometimes misplaced the paradigm can be, namely that wickedness brings retribution and righteousness brings reward. Such doctrines, he says, remain ‘key claims of a dominant interpretive tradition’ and have consequently formed a ‘pejorative paradigm’ that leaves the book of Proverbs out of favour in comparison to more nuanced books of the OT. The seminal work of 1955 by Klaus Koch – ‘Gibt es ein Vergeltungsdogma im Alten Tesament?’ (Is there a Dogma of Retribution in the Old Testament?) – receives special attention, as do subsequent, critical responses to it. Hatton suggests that the moral mechanism of act-consequence is just not that predictable and that in Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes the paradigm is principally relational. For ‘reward’ and ‘retribution’ are not mechanical but are rather conditioned by one’s relationship with the Lord.

Katharine Dell’s contribution explores the question whether there is a distinctive set of theological ideas for the three key wisdom books – Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes. After a brief survey of scholarship on this debate over the last century and a half, key themes that the books have in common are explored, with salient examples – the doctrine of retribution; the fear of the Lord; the figure of Wisdom and the attainment of wisdom; the theme of creation; communication and life and death. Although considerable commonality is found, there is also a discovery of difference and of interlinking with other books in the canon. The themes themselves are not confined to these ‘wisdom’ books, even though they characterize them accompanied by an essential didactic approach.

This prologue introduces the volume with some suggestions on how to study the age of William the Conqueror in the light of recent and ongoing developments in higher education.

Zoltan Schwab discusses creation in the Wisdom Literature. He begins with a historical overview, describing how Wisdom Literature’s creation texts became guides for meditation in antiquity, encouragements for science in early modernity, and mirrors for liberal ethics in (post)modernity. Scholars have characterised Wisdom Literature as emphasising ‘creation theology’ and ‘world order’, but Schwab suggests this is misleading. Rather, these texts exhibit ‘creator theology’, concerned with the God behind the world. Their theology holds in tension twin themes of power and beauty. As a case study of this, Schwab turns to Ecclesiastes. Creation is often seen as unimportant in this book, but Schwab argues the opposite. For example, wind (hebel, rûaḥ) infuses the argument throughout. In Ecclesiastes, God creates everything, not just in a single primordial act but in ongoing creative activity; not just in the realm of nature but in the realms of history and culture. Ecclesiastes, then, points us towards the deep things of God’s creation, but it concludes that we cannot ultimately comprehend them.

William P. Brown explores the pedagogy of the wisdom literature. He argues that wisdom is dynamic as it is imparted between individuals, and that it finds its telos in human character development. This dynamic pedagogy is versatile. Sometimes (especially Proverbs 1–9), it manifests itself in rebuke, pronounced hierarchically in the matrix of patriarchal authority. Rebuke, though, can also be dialogic; in Proverbs, the wise also impart it amongst themselves. Both models of rebuke are evident in Job, where Job and his friends reciprocally rebuke each other, and God hierarchically rebukes Job. God’s rebuke, though, is not simply belittling, rather eliciting wonder through the pedagogy of the Master Poet. These texts also teach through testimony – Qohelet invokes his personal observations and investigations, and Wisdom herself testifies to her role in creation (Proverbs 8). Here, Wisdom comes alongside readers as a playing child, and welcomes them as a gracious host. Finally, proverbs have pedagogical power, revelling in comparison, paradox, irony, and metaphor.

The somewhat neglected Wisdom of Solomon, or ‘Book of Wisdom’, contains concepts important not only for understanding wisdom in the rest of the OT but also for understanding how wisdom bridged both testaments. Joachim Schaper gives priority to the book’s theology and its place in Hellenistic Jewish and early Christian thought. He provides an overview of the book’s structure and versions, its intellectual context, its universalistic conceptions of God and humans in history, and how the book exhibits a ‘spiritual exercise’. Most important here are Wisdom’s use of πνευμα (‘spirit’) and its amalgam of Platonic, Stoic and Egyptian elements. It offers a distinct interpretation of the exodus, with which Schaper accounts for ideas of liberation and eschatology. As for the book as spiritual exercise, the discussion turns to matters of genre and literary function, disclosing its purpose to fortify religious beliefs and one’s self-mastery.

Continuing the volume’s third thematic strand (Individuals and Institutions), this chapter studies the nobility and aristocracy in the age of William the Conqueror. The discussion begins by pointing out the importance of hierarchy and status before drawing attention to the subjects of ancestry, culture, and education amongst the elites of the cross-Channel Anglo-Norman world and their neighbours on the Continent. Following investigations of aristocratic splendour and largesse, as well as of violence and competition, it closes by taking stock of the situation on the eve of William’s conquest of England.

Noga Ayali-Darshan covers the wisdom works and vernacular sayings of Syria-Palestine from the Late Bronze Age. This material exists in some form of Akkadian, including Sumero-Akkadian and Akkadian-Hurrian, all of which comes from sites at Ugarit and/or Emar. Darshan organises the works into four types: practical wisdom, critical wisdom, disputation poems and fables, and righteous sufferer compositions. Much of her chapter will introduce readers to the texts themselves, by way of their provenance, language and versions. Additionally, some thematic and particular linguistic reflections are given. In short, this chapter provides an introduction to an emerging and perhaps neglected area of wisdom from the biblical world.

Continuing the volume’s fourth thematic strand (Cultural Perspectives), this chapter studies the writing of history and memory in the age of William the Conqueror. After a discussion of Normandy’s first dynastic chronicle composed by Dudo of Saint-Quentin, it directs its focus onto monastic historical narratives produced in Normandy, England, and their neighbouring territories, before turning to a range of contemporary secular narratives. The chapter is rounded off with considerations of Anglo-Norman historical writing in the broader context of north-western Europe and its transmission in manuscripts.