English Art/Literary Religion

Poetic and wisdom literature tends to resist a straightforward chronological setting. Rightly understanding the Bible’s histories and prophetic literature depends to an extent on taking their historical context into account; such is not normally the case for Israel’s hymns and wisdom. Evidence from the ancient Near East demonstrates that hymnic and wisdom writings are among the most ancient of literary deposits, and likewise some of the Bible’s poetic compositions may be among its oldest. But it is also clear that throughout the histories of Israel and Judah, Hebrew poets and sages were at work—from earliest days, ***on past*** the canonical compositions, up through the Hellenistic period in the post-canonical books of Sirach and Wisdom of Solomon and beyond.