Essays on Judaism in the Pre-Hellenistic Period

Joseph Blenkinsopp

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9783110475296
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Jewish Theology

The essays deal with developments during the period from the liquidation of the Judean state to the conquests of Alexander the Great. This was a critical time in the Near East and the Mediterranean world in general. It marked the end of the great Semitic empires until the rise of Islam in the seventh century A.D., decisive changes in religion, with appeal to a creator-deity in Deutero-Isaiah, Babylonian Marduk cult, and Zoroastrianism.For the survivors of the Babylonian conquest in a post-collapse society the issue of continuity, with different groups claiming continuity with the past and possession of the traditions, there developed a situation favourable to the emergence of sects. The most pressing question, however, was what to do faced with the overwhelming power of empire, first Babylonian, then Persian. Finally, with the extinction of the native dynasty and the entire apparatus of a nation-state, the temple became the focus and emblem of group identity.

XI.The social context of the “Outsider Woman” in Proverbs 1–9

Source: Biblica 72 (1991): 457–73.

1The Date and Setting of Proverbs 1–9

The Book of Proverbs is a manual of didactic material containing nine compilations: two collections of aphorisms attributed to Solomon venerated as the paradigm and paragon of wisdom (1:10–22:16; 25:1–29:27); a collection of thirty sayings modelled on the Egyptian Wisdom of Amen-em-ope (22:17–24:22) to which an appendix has been attached under the title “Sayings of the Sages” (24:23– 34); a series of numerical or counting proverbs, especially in the familiar twothree, three-four series (30:10–33); the sayings of Agur ben Jakeh, a sceptic in the manner of Qoheleth (30:1–9), and a rather platitudinous admonition addressed to a king called Lemuel, otherwise unknown, by the Queen Mother warning against the dangers of women and wine (31:1–9). This miscellaneous assemblage is rounded off with an acrostic poem on “the excellent woman,” or “the woman of substance,” or “the capable wife,” depending on how one translates the Hebrew ʼēšet hayil (31:10–31). This poem corresponds to wisdom (hokmâ) personified as a wise, learned and desirable woman, shadowed by the ʼiššâ zārâ or hannokriyyâ, the “Outsider Woman” (1–9), in the first and introductory section of the book (chapters 1–9), thus rounding off the work. We will be concerned in what follows primarily with this counter-image of Hokmâ, Sophia) to whom I have assigned the name “the Outsider Woman” which in due time will call for clarification and disambiguation.

It is agreed that these first nine chapters were composed some time in the Second Temple period as an introduction to the compilation as a whole, but unfortunately the text itself offers little help in coming up with a more precise date of composition. An early commentator, C. H. Toy, proposed a date in the midthird century BC with some sections (6:1– 19 and 9:7–12) even later.339 One of the more recent commentators favours a date in the early Hellenistic period, though he agrees that an earlier date, in the mid to late Achaemenid period, is possible.340 Much depends on the identification and characterization of this antithesis to personified wisdom. The cosmopolitan background to these chapters, and to the book as a whole, cannot be urged in favor of a date in the Hellenistic period since Hellenistic influences were at work in Judah before the Macedonian conquest.341 Moreover, there are no clear indications in the book of Greek philosophy, leaving aside the possibility that the more philosophically sounding passages, such as the self-praise of Wisdom in 8:22–31, reminiscent of Sir 24:1– 22 and the Isis aretalogies, may have been inserted subsequently. Additions were in any case almost certainly made to the core composition.

The case for the earlier date is reinforced by some interesting linguistic and thematic parallels with prophetic texts by most scholars assigned to the Achaemenid period. In the first place, there is wide agreement that where the Woman Wisdom speaks she does so in the guise of a prophetic figure, and her admonitions make use of prophetic types of discourse (1:20–33; 8:1–21).342 A close parallel can be drawn with respect to the invitation-response pattern in the first discourse in which Wisdom’s offer falls on deaf ears:

Because I called and you refused (to listen),

stretched out my hand and no one took heed … (Prov 1:24)

or

Then they will call on me and I will not answer,

they will seek me but will not find me (Prov 1:28)

This reaction of Wisdom can be compared with the following passages from the third segment of the book of Isaiah:

Then when you call, Yahweh will answer;

When you cry out, he will say, ‘Here I am’ (Isa 58:9)

I was ready to be sought out, but they did not ask for me,

I was ready to be found, but they did not seek me;

I said, ‘Here I am, here I am’

to a nation that did not invoke my name.

All day long I spread out my hands

to a stubborn, rebellious people. (Isa 65:1–2a)

When I called no one answered,

I spoke, but no one listened;

they did what was evil in my sight,

choosing what was displeasing to me. (Isa 66:4)

A variation on the same pattern occurs in the invitation which Wisdom extends to the immature youths to participate in a banquet (Prov 9:1–6), recalling the invitation to eat and drink gratis at the conclusion of the second segment of Isaiah (55:1–2). An even closer, though contrasting, parallel is the image of the spread table and mixed wine prepared for the deities of good luck, Gad and Meni, in Isa 65:11, possibly a cultic meal of the marzeah type.

Similar echoes can be heard in the description of the gang of renegades in Prov 1:10–19, with its emphasis on civil disorder, violence and oppression. While the situation as described here is not confined to one place or one time, it tends to recur in prophetic texts generally assigned to the Achaemenid period (Isa 58:3–4; 59:1–15; Zech 8:10). The social and economic inequalities of Judaean society in the mid-fifth century, including profiteering (besaʻ, Isa 56:11b; Prov 1:19), called for drastic action during Nehemiah’s governorship (Neh 5). The complaint that the feet of the renegades run to commit evil in Isa 59:7a is even reproduced verbatim in Prov 1:16.343 Here, too, it seems much more likely that a discursive and didactic text like Proverbs 1–9 is drawing on prophetic material than the contrary. A final example is the description of the “Outsider Woman” forsaking “the partner of her youth” (ʼallûp něʻûrêhāh) and forgetting the covenant of her God (běrît ʼělohêhāh, Prov 2:17), reminiscent of Malachi’s indictment of the individual, perhaps a priest, who had “married the daughter of a foreign god,” in the process forsaking the wife of his youth (ʼēšet něʻûrêkâ) who is his covenanted wife (ʼēšet běrîtekâ, Mal 2:11,14–15; cf. Isa 54:6, ʼēšet něʻûrîm). Similar attaches littéraires will be noted as we proceed.344

This kind of didactic writing is far removed from the sphere of cult and ritual inhabited by temple personnel. It belongs to the world of the secular rather than the sacred, yet it is by no means detached from religious beliefs and traditions; witness the frequent appeal to “the fear of Yahweh” (1:29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10) and to Yahweh as the source of wisdom (2:5–8). While elements of folk wisdom, at home in the ethos of clan and household, have been worked up and polished for inclusion in the collections of aphorisms elsewhere in the book, the intellectualist and urban matrix of these nine chapters is apparent throughout. The setting is the town, with its streets, open spaces and crossroads where Woman Wisdom has her pitch and finds her audience (1:20). It would make sense to think of such writing as the product of a literate and learned institutional setting of some kind, but unfortunately any conclusion reached must be based on inference in the absence of evidence. In spite of vigorous attempts to prove the existence of schools or academies of scholarship and learning in pre-Hellenistic Israel, the earliest clear indication we have of such an institution is from Jesus ben Sira who invites the under-educated to lodge in his “house of instruction” (Sir 51:23).345 Having said this, it is safe to infer that there must have been some sort of school or academy associated with the temple for the training of cult personnel, and with the royal court for the training of government officials, judges and diplomats. The discourses or lectures in Proverbs 1–9 could have emanated, directly or indirectly, from such a school or academy for training young males, sons of socially and economically more prominent families, for a career in public office. The inference is eminently reasonable but, to repeat, the evidence to back it up is not forthcoming.346

2Solomon, fictive author, and his problematic marriages

As the title, “Proverbs of Solomon, Son of David, King of Israel” indicates, the wisdom inculcated in Proverbs 1–9 and throughout the book (10:1; 25:1) is royal wisdom, specifically the wisdom of Solomon. The narrative tradition about Solomon presents his wisdom as a quality divinely bestowed, one which conferred administrative and judicial skills, encyclopedic knowledge, and literary expertise (1 Kgs 3:5–14, 16–28; 5:9–14, 26), and of this we are reminded from time to time in these chapters (e. g. Prov 8:15–16). The same narrative tradition faults Solomon only in one respect, his addiction to foreign women (nāšîm nokriyyôt, 1 Kgs 11:1–8). The reproof complains that his attachment to them, whether as wives or harem women, was in violation of the law, and the outcome was that they “turned away his heart”, and did so by inducing him to adopt the cults of their non-Israelite deities (1 Kgs 11:9–13). It is therefore not surprising that in a composition attributed to Solomon the foreign woman would present the greatest obstacle to the acquisition of wisdom, and would do so by virtue of her allegiance to non-Yahwistic cults.

An understanding of these nine chapters requires that we take seriously the author’s conviction of Solomonic authorship, a tradition which he inherited and found no reason to reject. The sayings which it contains are examples of Solomon’s divinely bestowed wisdom, meaning wisdom for living, encapsulated in the figure of the Woman Wisdom. The greatest obstacle to the acquisition of this wisdom is addiction to false worship, and for Solomon himself the occasion for adopting these cults, namely, idolatry, was his addiction to foreign women who “turned away his heart.” This danger is therefore encapsulated in the figure of the “Outsider Woman.”

In taking Solomon to task for this one aberration, the biblical historian cites what he takes to be a law forbidding intermarriage between Israelites and foreigners, the purpose of which was to avoid contaminating the cult of Yahweh by adopting alien cults. We find such a law, with the same rationale, in Deut 7:1– 4, and it would be natural to assume that this is the law which the narrator had in mind. Though the wording is somewhat different, the general drift in 1 Kgs 11:2 is identical with the law in Deuteronomy, with one significant difference that the peoples supplying women to Solomon are foreigners (Egyptian, Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, Hittite) while the seven nations listed in Deut 7:1 are indigenous to the land of Judah (Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, Jebusites). The only people common to both are the Hittites, who could presumably be considered either indigenous or foreign. Correspondingly, the reprehensible cults in question in 1 Kings 11 are those of foreign deities. Four are mentioned by name – the goddess Astarte, patroness of Sidon, Milcom and Molech of Ammon, and Chemosh of Moab (1 Kgs 11:5–8). The list is clearly intended to be illustrative rather than exhaustive.

Closer to the list of supplier nations in 1 Kings 11 is the law in Deut 23:2–9 which disqualifies certain categories from membership in the qāhāl, the Israelite assembly: Ammonites and Moabites in perpetuity, Edomites and Egyptians to the second generation.347 These are the first four of the six (seven in LXX) nations in 1 Kgs 11:1. The citation of a law in 1 Kgs 11:2 forbidding marriage with women from the countries mentioned in the previous verse is therefore a paraphrase rather than a direct quote, and its purpose was to bring together (1) the general prohibition of exogamous marriage in Deut 7:1– 4; (2) the law forbidden the king to accumulate women, that is, set up a harem, in Deut 17:17, a law which also speaks of the turning away of the heart; and especially (3) the disqualification law in Deut 23:2–9.348

The only other allusion to Solomon’s foreign women – there is none in Chronicles – occurs towards the end of the Nehemiah memoir where he reports a brisk encounter with Judaeans who had married Ashdodite, Ammonite and Moabite women (Neh 13:23–27). Here, too, it seems that the reference to Ammonite and Moabite women is a later insertion.349 The outcome was that, after roughing them up, Nehemiah imposed an oath on these men to foreswear marriage with foreign women, the prohibition to apply both to themselves and their children. But since they had already contracted such marriages, we would be led to beli...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Foreword
• Overview
• I. The Theological Politics of Deutero-Isaiah
• II. Deutero-Isaiah and the Creator God: Yahweh, Ahuramazda, Marduk
• III. Judaeans, Jews, Children of Abraham
• IV. Bethel in the Neo-Babylonian and early Achaemenid period
• V. Temple and Society in Achaemenid Judah
• VI. The Intellectual World of Judaism in the Pre-Hellenistic Period
• VII. Was the Pentateuch the constitution of the Jewish ethnos in the Persian period?
• VIII. Footnotes to the rescript of Artaxerxes in Ezra 7:11–26
• IX. The Nehemiah Autobiographical Memoir
• X. Ideology and Utopia in the book of Chronicles
• XI. The social context of the “Outsider Woman” in Proverbs 1–9
• XII. Social Roles of Prophets in Early Achaemenid Judah
• XIII. The sectarian element in early Judaism
• XIV. Jewish Sectarianism from Ezra to the Hasidim
• XV. A Case of Benign Imperial Neglect and its Consequences: An Exercize in Virtual History
• Abbreviations
• Bibliography
• Author Index
• Biblical Index