Counsels of Wisdom

Counsels of Wisdom is a piece of Babylonian wisdom literature written in Akkadian[1] containing moral exhortations.[2] It is composed primarily of two-line units,[3] without sections.[4] A translation of extant portions of the text was published in Lambert 1996. Existing manuscripts are fragmentary, but the original was estimated to be about 160 lines.[2]

Date of authorship

Scholars disagree on the date of the work. Gemser and Bohl placed it in the First Dynasty.,[5] but Lambert believes it should be dated to the Kassite period.[6] The work is attested primarily by a stone tablet written in Late Babylonian script.[6]

Comparison with other wisdom literature

The text is addressed to "my son", which may be a physical son, a student, a successor, or a trope of the genre, as it is in later wisdom literature.[2] Scholars have observed several pieces of ancient wisdom literature to be similar, including the Instructions of Shuruppak, Counsels of a Pessimist, and the Hymn to Šamaš (See Shamash). Together these works were an ancient genre.[6] Similarities have been noticed with the Book of Proverbs, but no literary dependence has been found.[7] The Counsels of Wisdom is believed to have been somewhat popular in its time, since fragments of this passage are quoted in other extant works.[2]

Kindness to Evildoers

Biblical scholar John Nolland sees a passage in the Counsels of Wisdom as a possible precursor to Jesus' command to "love your enemies": "Do not return evil to the man who disputes with you; requite with kindness your evil-doer... smile on your adversary."[8]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Kitchen 1977, p. 114.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Lambert 1996, p. 96.
  3. ↑ Kitchen 1977, p. 88.
  4. ↑ Kitchen 1977, p. 86.
  5. ↑ Jaarbericht ex Oriente Lux. VIII (670). Missing or empty |title= (help)
  6. 1 2 3 Lambert 1996, p. 97.
  7. ↑ Whybray, R.N. (2009). Wisdom in Proverbs: The Concept of Wisdom in Proverbs 1-9. Studies in Biblical Theology, First Series. Wipf & Stock Publishers. p. 51. ISBN 978-1-60899-019-1. Retrieved 16 April 2017.
  8. ↑ Nolland, John. The Gospel of Matthew: a commentary on the Greek text. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2005 pg. 267

References

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