This collection of essays examines the wisdom traditions of the Old Testament from a variety of angles. The slipperiness of the concept of 'wisdom literature', the transmission of 'wise' advice for living, rabbinic and patristic approaches to the Bible's wisdom traditions, and cutting-edge modern perspectives on such Old Testament books as Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes are all to be found here.

In the tradition of the renowned previous volumes from the Oxford Old Testament Seminar - King and Messiah in Israel and the Ancient Near East (1998), In Search of Pre-Exilic Israel (2004), Temple and Worship in Biblical Israel (2005), and Prophecy and Prophets in Ancient Israel (2010)-this new volume again brings the scholarship of the Oxford Seminar, here focused on the rich subject of Old Testament wisdom traditions, to an international readership.

Preface
List of Contributors
Abbreviations
Introduction

Part I: ISSUES IN THE STUDY OF ISRAELITE WISDOM
'The Place and Limits of Wisdom Revisited'
Stuart Weeks, University of Durham, UK
'Ethics in the Wisdom Literature of the Old Testament'
John Barton, University of Oxford, UK
'"Mother in Israel": Women and Wisdom'
Jenni Williams, Wycliffe Hall, UK
'Orality and the Sage: A Word (Proverb) to the Wise Suffices'
Aulikki Nahkola, Newbold College, UK
'The Nineteenth-Century Beginnings of "Wisdom Literature", and Its Twenty-first-Century End?'
Will Kynes, Whitworth University, USA

Part II: THE WISDOM CORPUS OF THE HEBREW BIBLE
'Literary and Linguistic Matters in the Book of Proverbs'
Gary A. Rendsburg, Rutgers University, USA
'"The Fear of the Lord is the Beginning of Wisdom": Calendars, Divination and Stories of Terror'
James E. Patrick, University of Oxford, UK
'One or Two Things You May Not Know about the Universe: The Cosmology of the Divine Speeches in Job'
David J.A. Clines, University of Sheffield, UK
'The Canonical Taming of Job (Job 42.1-6)'
Terje Stordalen, University of Oslo, Norway
'The Rhetorical Structure of Ecclesiastes'
John Jarick, University of Oxford, UK
'Is Patristic Exegesis Good for Biblical Scholarship? Jerome and Gregory of Nyssa on Qohelet'
Jennie Grillo, Duke University, USA
'At Play in Potential Space: Reading King Qohelet's Building Experiment with Psychoanalytic Spatial Theory'
Mette Bundvad, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Part III: OTHER TEXTS IN RELATION TO WISDOM
'"I Will Incline My Ear to a Proverb; I Will Solve My Riddle to the Music of the Harp" (Psalm 49.4): The Wisdom Tradition and the Psalms'
Susan Gillingham, University of Oxford, UK
'The Song of Songs: A Wisdom Book'
Edmée Kingsmill, The Community of the Sisters of the Love of God, Oxford, UK
'Wisdom and the Garden of Eden'
John Day, University of Oxford, UK
'The Absence of Wisdom in the Wilderness'
Philip Y. Yoo, University of Oxford, UK
'Jeremiah, Creation and Wisdom'
Katharine J. Dell, University of Cambridge, UK
'Handel's "Nabal"'
Deborah W. Rooke, Regent's Park College, UK
'Ben Sira's Table Manners and the Social Setting of His Book'
James K. Aitken, University of Cambridge, UK
'Ben Sira on Friendship: Notes on Intertextuality and Method'
James E. Harding, University of Otago, New Zealand

Index of References
Index of Authors