Seth Bledsoe introduces the 2nd century BCE wisdom book of Ben Sira. While not forming part of the Tanakh or Protestant Old Testament, Ben Sira appears in the LXX and subsequently the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox canons. The book presents itself as the words of a well-educated scribe, and draws on both Jewish and Greek traditions. Central to the book is Wisdom, which is intimately connected to creation, fear of the Lord, Torah, and tradition. It also contains advice on practical matters, such as finance (it both respects wealth and advocates generosity) and relations with women (it is in places decided misogynistic). Although generally optimistic that good deeds will lead to positive consequences, Ben Sira also grapples with the problems of theodicy and death, concluding that righteous persons can live on through the legacy of a good name.

This chapter opens the volume’s second thematic strand (Space and Society) with a discussion of landscape and settlement in the age of William the Conqueror. It distinguishes between landscapes of use, landscapes of settlement, and landscapes of meaning and memory, each of which it analyses in turn. Across the entire chapter, attention is paid not only to human settlement and the use and exploitation of the surrounding landscape, but also to the natural environment and the many ways in which it influenced and determined people’s lives through dynamic interaction.

Knut Heim examines the literary and historical contexts of wisdom literature, taking the book of Proverbs as a case study, and surveying the work of key scholars in the field. Beginning with literary context, he argues that the sayings are organised into ‘clusters’ through linguistic and thematic links with their neighbours, and that this context has hermeneutical significance. Particularly important is the placement of religious proverbs, which are well integrated with their surroundings. This calls into question the scholarly assumption that religious elements are a late addition to the book, and that wisdom was originally a ‘secular’ endeavour. Rather, elements like the ‘fear of the Lord’ were already embedded within the sayings collections by the time an editor added chapters 1–9. This has implications for the historical development of Proverbs and, more broadly, of wisdom in Israel.

This chapter concludes the volume’s third thematic strand (Individuals and Institutions) with a study of law and justice in the age of William the Conqueror. It begins by discussing the law of persons, before moving on to the law of property and the law of wrongs. The chapter’s final section is dedicated to courts and procedure and gives a sense of the practical application of these laws in Anglo-Norman society. Throughout the entire chapter, notions of continuity are contextualised with moments of change, and important attention is drawn to the socio-political dimension of the law.

In his chapter on Proverbs, Christopher Ansberry provides a refreshing introductory approach to the book, not least because he starts with the history of interpretation rather than letting thematic concerns dominate. He identifies five patterns within the history of the book’s interpretation, including a focus on character formation, debates about the nature of its ‘wisdom’ and place in the canon, interest in its reception via matters of date and authorship, the discovery of comparative ancient Near Eastern material, and current, expanding interdisciplinary approaches to the book. A section on the fundamental nature of the book takes on matters of form, genre, poetic features, and the idea of a ‘collection’, whilst granting admiration rather than suspicion to the complexities of the book’s sayings. Likewise, the structure of Proverbs, though containing many parts, comes together into a coherent whole, an ‘anthology’, to which each piece contributes. Ansberry concludes by proposing four ‘dominant’ themes in the book: the fear of the Lord; wisdom; moral order and created order; retribution and reward.

In the Introduction, the editors briefly sketch the parametres of the volume, and give an overview of each subsequent chapter.

Simon Cheung discusses the scholarship surrounding the ‘wisdom psalms’, with an eye towards the varied proposals, as well as the grounds for and development of them over the last century. From this Cheung sets forth his own conception of wisdom psalms. They constitute ‘a family of psalms, with varying degrees of membership, that exhibit a wisdom-oriented constellation of its generic elements’. The core traits are likened to DNA, which can be more or less present, and mainly discerned in theme, tone and intention. ‘Wisdom psalms’, to some degree, then, feature wisdom, carry an ‘intellectual tone’ and a pedagogical intent, all of which Cheung inspects in Psalm 34:8–17. Overall, his approach may offer interpreters additional accuracy when considering wisdom and its influence within the Psalter.

Moving into the wider world of the ancient Near East, Michael Fox and Suzanna R. Millar examine Egyptian wisdom literature. They begin with an overview of extant examples from the Old Kingdom to the Late Period, and then turn to some major themes and issues. They consider Ma’at (the regulating force of truth/justice), character development (particularly as expressed through polar character types), pedagogy (including the debate about who is capable of learning), and transmission (through the generations in oral and written forms). The second half of the chapter assesses some commonly proposed examples of Egyptian influence on biblical wisdom literature, namely the influence of Amenemope on Prov 22:17–23:11 and elsewhere in Proverbs, Egyptian parallels to Proverbs 8, Egyptian parallels to Prov 23:12–24:22, an alleged precursor to Job 38–39 in Egyptian onomastica, and connections between Ben Sira and the Demotic Instruction Phibis.

Noting the debates around whether ‘wisdom’ constitutes a genre, Suzanna R. Millar instead studies the multiple smaller genres of which wisdom literature consists. Texts use (and sometimes intentionally misuse) genres to communicate with readers, providing them with conventions for interpretation and expectations about content. Surveying Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job, Ben Sira, and Wisdom of Solomon, Millar discerns four clusters of genres, grouped according to their communicative purpose. Some genres intend to instruct their users (sayings, instructions, diatribe, protreptic, and didactic narratives); others engage in reasoning (reflections and wisdom dialogues). These genres are not unexpected in wisdom literature, but the next are more familiar from other biblical corpora: some genres offer praise (either to wisdom, people of God), and others enunciate complaints (laments and legal complaints). These multiple genres combine and interact in complex ways within the wisdom book

This chapter introduces the volume’s first thematic strand (Home and Away) with a study of Normandy and the Continent in the age of William the Conqueror. It commences with a consideration of terminology, followed by an analysis of Normandy’s developing boundaries and the Normans’ adjustment to Christianity. The chapter then takes a comparative view of Normandy’s neighbours (Brittany, Flanders, Maine, Blois, and France) before studying the duchy’s rise as a major player in eleventh-century north-western Europe. It concludes with discussions of knightly culture, Church reform, and the influence of popes and emperors.

Mark Sneed introduces readers to the world of scribes. Drawing first on some of the earliest developments of Sumerian scribalism, he gives an overview of how scribes trained and worked in the ancient Near East more broadly. In Egypt and elsewhere, scribal training began at an early age and involved a wide range of curricula, including wisdom literature, which scribes copied and memorized, as it played a significant role in scribal education. Although concrete evidence for Israelite schools is lacking, Sneed finds reason to believe that similar scribal practices existed there, where wisdom literature too served technical and ethical purposes. Scribes, then, existed in ancient Israel, and for Sneed could be identified in various ways: priests, prophets, and sages. Behind each of these lies the “scribe” as one who composed the texts themselves. Thus Sneed finds far more that is common than different among the biblical materials, wisdom texts included, and conceives of the scribe as holding a wide-ranging professional role in Israel that was not tied down to a single genre of literature.

With his ‘Solomonic Connection’, David Firth observes the man Solomon as he appears in Kings and Chronicles. Solomon is ‘paradigmatic’ for understanding wisdom in both of these books and yet he is not treated identically therein. Kings and Chronicles offer different portraits of the exceedingly wise king, whether that be his foundational role for wisdom or his problematic relationship with it. Matters of the temple, Solomon’s behaviour, torah, and the very conception of wisdom itself all have a place in biblical presentations of Solomon. Firth looks closely at 1 Kings 1–11 and 2 Chronicles 1–9 with a literary and theological reading that does not let one account determine the other or allow the Solomonic portraits in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes to have all of the attention.