Wisdom Literature

Wisdom literature is a genre common across the ancient Near East, consisting of statements by sages that offer teachings about divinity and virtue; though it draws on techniques of traditional oral storytelling, it was disseminated chiefly in written form. The earliest known examples date to the middle of the third millennium BC in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, and the genre later appeared in Greek, Chinese and Indian literatures around the middle of the first millennium BC. The genre is often divided between pragmatic, real-world guidance on proper conduct, exemplified by the Book of Proverbs, and more skeptical works, sometimes called vanity literature, that question the value of human achievement in the face of mortality, exemplified by Ecclesiastes. A related existential strand, typified by the Book of Job and preceded by Mesopotamian works such as the Babylonian Theodicy, wrestles with divine reward and punishment and the suffering of the just; the genre of mirrors for princes, with a long history in Islamic and Western Renaissance literature, is considered a secular cognate of wisdom literature, and Hesiod's Works and Days was regarded by classical antiquity as a comparable source of moral instruction.