This chapter locates the Sophists within the context of earlier Greek wisdom traditions and efforts by a variety of individuals (from Hesiod to Parmenides and Pindar) to establish and communicate their own poetic and/or intellectual authority. The Sophists participated in long-standing debates over the relationship between sophia and technê, and over tensions surrounding physical versus intellectual skills, learning, and teaching. They also looked back to the practice of wisdom and maxim collection. There was no dominant tradition under which one could unify the manifestations of sophia in Archaic and early Classical Greece; this complexity was an important aspect of the sophistic inheritance, and is the background against which we must measure individual efforts to claim distinctive achievement. The analysis traces the importance of Hesiodic and quasi-Hesiodic wisdom collections, the emergence of the inquiry into nature and of intellectual and cultural experts known as “sages” (sophoi), and the representation of sophia in sympotic and epinician poetry.

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.

Hard times for Babylon followed the end of the First Dynasty; but records of two Sealand kings, and the account of magnificent rebuilding of Marduk’s temple by a Kassite king imply wealth and energy. Glass production brought a new source of wealth, and horses were bred for chariots. Marduk was still the supreme god. The top status of the Kassite kings in Babylon was recognized by the pharaohs in Egypt. There cuneiform was used for international correspondence and Babylonian literature used to train local scribes. Foreign wives were taken from Elamite, Assyrian, and Hittite royalty. A top scribe from Babylon served in Assyria, and literature flourished. Boulders recording donations of land were carved with texts and celestial motifs. The office of eunuch is discussed. The Assyrian king raided Babylon, looting literary tablets among other valuables. He took over rule of Bahrain to access Gulf trade. The Kassite kings soon resumed the dynasty but the Elamite king raided and in turn took huge amounts of booty. In the next dynasty, the great Nebuchadnezzar I defeated Elam and wrote a heroic account. As a result of tribal incursions by Arameans, the Aramaic language began to spread, and camels trained for transport opened up desert trade. A library already existed in Babylon.