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An Obituary for “Wisdom Literature”: The Birth, Death, and Intertextual Reintegration of a Biblical Corpus

2020; Eisenbrauns; Volume: 30; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5325/bullbiblrese.30.2.0314

2576-0998

Cooper Smith,

Biblical Studies and Interpretation

“The Wisdom Literature category is dead” (p. 244). While admitting that this assertion is “in some sense aspirational” (p. 24), Will Kynes is both provocative and compelling as he explains and defends this proposition. Kynes does not mean that interpreters should jettison attempts to read Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes comparatively. In fact, he affirms that these three are mutually informing due to their “particular interest in the concept of wisdom” (p. 9). Rather, Kynes objects to the prevailing practice that reckons Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes as “wisdom literature,” when this is understood as an exclusive, taxonomic classification of their essential genre.Kynes demonstrates the lack of vitality in the “wisdom literature” classification in two ways. In Part 1, he focuses on the problems with the category itself due to its definitional imprecision and dubious inception. According to Kynes, attempts to define “wisdom literature” are futile, since they are either circular (“wisdom literature” reflects the characteristics of Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes because they are “wisdom literature”) or boundless (defining “wisdom” so broadly that its influence is detected throughout the canon).Kynes then argues convincingly that the “wisdom literature” category originated with Johann Bruch in 1851 who used it—in deference to Enlightenment impulses—to champion a universal version of Israelite religion that was abstracted from its particular practices. This late and suspect origin demonstrates that “wisdom literature” is not an inherently obvious classification and, when coupled with the definitional concerns, casts doubt on whether the traditional construal of the genre category can be defended.While part 1 identifies problems with the “wisdom literature” category, part 2 undermines all claims that any text belongs exclusively to a single genre. This is Kynes’s most ambitious and provocative section, as he draws on intertextuality, network theory, emergence, and conceptual blending to construct a new account of genre. In his obituary for the single category “wisdom literature,” Kynes calls for the death of all taxonomic approaches to genre.Overall, Kynes’s account of genre is creative and compelling. He defines genre according to a “nominalist account” as “a group of texts gathered together due to some perceived significant affinity between them” (p. 107). Kynes helpfully explains his approach by likening texts to stars in three-dimensional space. Just as a single star can be combined into various constellation patterns from different vantage points in the universe, so also texts participate in multiple genre groupings simultaneously as they share different features with different textual groups as perceived by the culturally located reader. Further, Kynes avoids generic anarchy by constraining readers when assigning a text to a genre. Just as a constellation is not any grouping of stars but only those that form a discernible pattern, so also texts must demonstrably share an affinity that contributes significantly to the group’s interpretation for the set to be a justifiable genre. By emphasizing the role of the reader in perceiving genre groups, interpreters are called to explore the meaning potential of various groupings without arguing that an author intended their work as a species of all the ascribed genres. Readers should compare texts with various genre groupings both forward and backward in time due to their perceived relevant similarities and relevant differences in order to interpret the objective features of the text that the author produced. No single genre grouping provides exhaustive insight. Instead, exploring the ways that texts participate in various genres contributes to interpretation in a way that would be missed without such an intertextual sensitivity.In part 3, Kynes applies his method to demonstrate its interpretive potential. Loosed from the reductionist classification as “wisdom literature,” Kynes explores various biblical, ancient, and modern groupings for Job, Ecclesiastes, and Proverbs to understand how each grouping partially contributes to the books’ interpretations by attending to otherwise underappreciated textual features.A question remains from Kynes’s model of genre that is not clearly answered: while there is a multiplicity of valid genre groupings, are some more primary than others? In other words, Kynes successfully argues that it is a misinterpretation to read Paul Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress as only an allegory (p. 140), but is there some sense in which it is more fitting and necessary to read the work as an allegory as opposed, for example, to reading it along with historical travel narratives (e.g., Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild and Heinrich Harrer’s Seven Years in Tibet)? On the one hand, Kynes insists that “interpretation should start with any genres in which the author has explicitly signaled that she intends her text to be read” (p. 116), which suggests readers are compelled to read Pilgrim’s Progress as an allegory. But, on the other hand, such a compulsion does not seem grounded in Kynes’s genre theory. There is nothing privileged or necessary about seeing the star Mintaka as part of Orion’s belt rather than seeing it as part of another constellation from an alternate vantage point in the universe. More is needed to explain the relation between author-intended and reader-perceived genres as a step toward understanding whether certain genres are more fundamental and, thus, incumbent on readers to recognize in a way that other genre groupings are not.Regardless of this concern, Kynes accomplishes his aim of delegitimizing the exclusive classification of Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes as “wisdom literature,” which frees them to be read in a multiplicity of genre groupings, whether ancient or modern. Kynes’s methodology of genre is a helpful, chastened approach that allows the insights of intertextuality to inform biblical interpretation in a way that is oriented toward attending to the extant text produced by the author. Creative, provocative, and winsomely written, the book rewards a careful reading for interpreters of Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes, as well as those more generally interested in questions on the nature of genre in literary and biblical interpretation.