The Wisdom Books of the Bible - Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, Ben Sira, Wisdom of Solomon: A Survey of the History of Their Interpretation

This is an exhaustive survey of the biblical wisdom books that focuses on the history of the contextual interpretations of the texts. Modern scholars use the term "wisdom" literature to include the books of Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, some psalms and also Ben Sira, as well as the Wisdom of Solomon. Such books differed clearly from the rest of the Old Testament in style and find their closest parallels outside the Bible, especially in Egyptian and Mesopotamian literature. Generally, they are marked by the artistic use of parallelism, the balanced and symmetrical use of phrases peculiar to Hebrew poetry. In particular scholars note that the word "wisdom" is popular in all the books of the Wisdom Literature.