Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. Poetic Ethics in Proverbs
  • Cited by 10
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
December 2015
Print publication year:
2015
Online ISBN:
9781316344637
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316344637
Subjects:
Biblical Studies - Old Testament, Hebrew Bible, Religious Ethics, Religion
Information

Book description

The Book of Proverbs' frequent use of binary oppositions - righteous and wicked, wise and foolish - has led many to assume that its vision of the moral world is relatively simplistic. This study demonstrates that Proverbs in fact presents a remarkably sophisticated response to ethical questions of profound concern to the Israelite sages who crafted the book: what motivates human beings? How do they learn? How does the power of desire shape human characters? Anne W. Stewart analyzes Proverbs' multifaceted collection of images and metaphors to reveal their complex understanding of the development of the moral self, which suggests that character formation requires educating all of the senses and not simply the cognitive faculties. One of few works to make explicit connections between the poetic form of Proverbs and its pedagogical function, Poetic Ethics in Proverbs will appeal to all those interested in literary approaches to the Bible.

Reviews

'Throughout, the discussion is well-rooted not only in the regular debates and literature of biblical scholarship, but also in the debates and literature of moral philosophy as well as of the general study of literature. A recurrent emphasis is the limitations of those treatments of Proverbs that see the book as essentially a collection of simplistic and/or dogmatic perspectives; [Stewart] argues that this fails to do justice to the sophisticated understanding of the complexities of the human person and human motivations that she finds to be consistently present … This is one of the best books on Proverbs that I have read.'

Walter Moberly Source: Journal for the Study of the Old Testament

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

Contents

Contents

Metrics

Altmetric attention score

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

Book summary page views

Total views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.