Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 17:1 (NA 1966)
Article: The Wisdom Movement And Israel’s Covenant Faith
Author: David A. Hubbard

TynBul 17:1 (1966) p. 3

The Wisdom Movement And Israel’s Covenant Faith

D. A. Hubbard

The Tyndale Old Testament Lecture For 1965*

* Delivered In Cambridge On 10th July, 1965.

Among the great gains in biblical scholarship in recent years has been the rediscovery of the importance of holy history. We have become increasingly aware that God’s revelation centres in the record of His redemptive acts and in the inspired interpretation of them by prophets and apostles. Other approaches, like the study of Israel’s faith as an expression of man’s search for ethical order or as a chapter in the history of world religions, have given way to an emphasis on the uniqueness of Israel’s role among the ancient peoples. Her election and the covenant which God made with her, her attitude towards her calling, her preoccupation with history more than nature, her non-mythological faith, her cultus whose moral demands took priority to ritual—these and many similar ideas have captured the attention of European and American scholars in the past three decades.

Redemptive history has rightly become the mainline of Old Testament interpretation. Recent approaches to hermeneutics contentrate on the historical connection between the Testaments, rather than on the similarities in ethical instruction or spiritual values. Typology, the study of the orderly patterns which God has followed in steering the course of holy history, has become a dominant theme. Time and again we meet the phrase ‘promise and fulfilment’ in biblical studies.1 The Exodus and its preparation in the patriarchal period, the Monarchy and its previews in the days of the Judges, the Exile and return

TynBul 17:1 (1966) p. 4

with their intimations of judgment and grace—these have been the focal points of Old Testament investigations.

An unhappy by-product of this concentration on covenant, kingship, and cult has been a neglect of other aspects of Old Testament thought, notably the wisdom literature. Of the Old Testament theologies with which our generation has been so abundantly blessed, only von Rad’s has sought to do any thing like justice to the wisdom movement, which is responsible for the presence of three or four books in the Canon (depending on the classification of the Song of Songs) and has bequeathed a rich legacy of literary form and language to the psalmists and prophets.2 The two great works on the culture of Israel— Pedersen’s and de Vaux’s—stress the royal, priestly, and prophetic offices and give only fleeting attention to the role of the wise men in Old Testament times.

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