The Sword and the Stylus: An Introduction to Wisdom in the Age of Empires

by Leo Purdue

Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 2008. 512 pp. $38.00. ISBN 978-0-8028-6245-7.

THE LAST TWO DECADES HAVE SEEN a number of publications that take up the topic of empire and the effects of empire on the shaping of biblical literature. Such endeavors maintain that biblical texts developed in and responded to their imperial contexts in various ways, from affirmation to accommodation to overt calls for resistance. Now, with this ambitious volume, Leo Perdue of Brite Divinity School invites us to consider Wisdom literature “as a product of the empires” (p. 1). He insists that wisdom texts—far from collections of timeless truths, “disconnected ideas,” or “eternal thoughts”—cannot be understood apart from their social-historical circumstances, “the cultures in which [they] took root” (p. 1). Accordingly, Perdue organizes his project for the most part chronologically, sweeping from Egyptian wisdom of the third millennium b.c.e. to “rabbinic” wisdom of the first six centuries c.e. and, at every turn, pondering the impact of empires on the sages’ social positions, roles, and worldviews.

The first chapter sets Israelite and early Jewish Wisdom literature in its international social-historical context. Perdue discusses an assortment of preliminary issues related to Israelite wisdom, including its definition, key vocabulary and themes, rhetorical features, the roles of sages, and likely instructional settings (i.e., the royal court, households, schools, and temple). And he compares and contrasts the same to other ancient Near Eastern wisdom traditions and texts such as those of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Sumer and Akkad, Ugarit, Aram, and Greece— traditions that he argues strongly influenced that of Israel. Perdue thus highlights the international character of wisdom and the particularities of its expression in Israel and its neighbors.

Perdue next devotes a chapter to each biblical and apocryphal wisdom text, moving in chronological order by empire: Proverbs (the monarchies of Israel and Judah), Job (Neo-Babylonian), wisdom psalms (Persian), Qoheleth (Ptolemaic), Sirach (Seleucid), and the Wisdom of Solomon (Roman). In each of these chapters, following a brief introduction, Perdue a) argues for a likely date and social-historical context for the book or a significant portion thereof; b) describes the book’s literary structure and general content; c) analyzes its “social features,” namely, what the book suggests about the social positions and roles of the sages; and finally, d) considers the book’s major theological themes. Three final chapters address what Perdue calls “continuing streams” of wisdom: apocalyptic literature (e.g., Daniel, 1–2 Enoch), apocalyptic wisdom at Qumran, and “rabbinic wisdom” (e.g., Mishnah, Midrash).
Perdue consistently emphasizes that the sages were people of their times and produced wisdom texts that reflected and responded to their circumstances. He argues, for example, that the sages of Proverbs saw themselves as servants of the king, and thus advanced a socially and politically conservative theology to buttress the monarchy and maintain social stability. In contrast, the poet of Job, whom Perdue thinks was likely among the exiles in Babylon, challenged traditional theology—especially its claims about divine justice—in response to Judah’s disaster and the crisis of faith it provoked. A similar contrast is evident between Qoheleth and Ben Sira. In the late third century B.C.E.., Qoheleth, whom Perdue describes as critical of traditional religion and strongly influenced by Greek skepticism, taught his aristocratic students that God is hidden, the cosmos plods along in endless repetition, wisdom affords no real advantage, and the only gift that God grants to some is the capacity for joy. A century later, however, Ben Sira, who was also a teacher in Jerusalem and perhaps a temple scribe, wrote favorably about the temple and priesthood, identified wisdom with Torah, and com-bined creation theology with the theology of Israel’s election. For Perdue, the impact of empire on both sages is apparent: whereas Qoheleth adopted Greek thought, Ben Sira adapted Greek thought to fit his understanding of Judaism.

The scope and complexity of this volume is impressive. Perdue navigates a stunning amount of material, and moves adroitly between texts, cultures, and historical periods. As with any project of such breadth, readers with expertise in any of the literature will surely find points with which they disagree, or about which they would like a more nuanced discussion. Readers will also likely challenge Perdue’s dating of some texts—a task he readily acknowledges throughout is difficult. But Perdue succeeds in showing both the “durative quality of wisdom” (p. 279) and its malleability over millennia.

Aspects of the project do give me pause. First, Perdue’s claim that “most research concerning wisdom for the past century” has been characterized by a “stranglehold of idealism,” namely, a disregard of the literature’s historical and social contexts (pp. 1–3), is a considerable overstate-ment. Indeed, even a cursory review of the research demonstrates the opposite. Interpreters of Proverbs, for example, have long pondered the impact of social-historical context on the personifications of wisdom and folly (Prov 1–9; cf. 31:10–31). Interpreters of Qoheleth continue to wrestle with the possible effects of empire, whether Persian, Ptolemaic, or other, on Qoheleth’s theology. That Perdue does not engage much of this work in his analysis may contribute to the erroneous perception that “too many interpreters have often made the teachings of the wise impervious to history and immune to the roles and institutions of social life” (p. 3). My hope is that Perdue’s volume will motivate interested readers to explore further what is already an ongoing, lively conversation about wisdom in its social-historical contexts.

Second, I am far less confident than is Perdue that we can use the language and themes of a text, the institutions it mentions, and its “implicit” claims about the sages, to identify that text with “a specific social group” (p. 100). Such a direct correlation leaves little to no room for the possibility that the producers of a text may have been conversant in a range of genres, themes, and points of view. Further, I am uncertain what these “specific social groups” or “communities,” as Perdue calls them (e.g., “sapiential,” “apocalyptic,” and the combined “sapiential-apocalyptic”), would have looked like in the larger community. Were they distinct and recognizable?

Finally, although the book’s subtitle indicates that it is an introduction to wisdom, I recom-mend that anyone beginning a study of the Wisdom literature read The Sword and the Stylus alongside standard introductions. Perdue’s writing is detailed and dense, and his development of the larger argument assumes a certain knowledge on the part of readers. Notwithstanding these concerns, this volume is a welcome contribution to the study of Wisdom literature. Perdue is to be commended for this significant achievement.

Christine Roy Yoder
Columbia Theological Seminary
Decatur, Georgia
    

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No Ordinary Angel: Celestial Spirits and Christian Claims about Jesus

by Susan R. Garrett

Yale University Press, New Haven, 2008. 352 pp. $30.00 (cloth). ISBN 978-0-300-14095-8.

I DID NOT EXPECT A BOOK about angels to include incisive critique of contemporary culture, careful historical investigation, and a powerful affirmation of the Christian faith, but this book brings all those together in a way that makes good scholarship accessible to a fairly broad audience. In each chapter, Susan Garrett examines what present-day writers say about angelic encounters to discern the understandings of reality that underlie those accounts, especially looking for connections between popular spirituality and current talk about angels. She then considers how ancient (mostly Jewish and Christian) texts discuss angels, seeking to discover what those ancient descriptions of angels tell us about the speaker’s understandings of God and the world. Each chapter then looks at how NT writers use attributes of angels to describe the person and work of Jesus. Thus, this book is also a work on Christology.

In each of her six central chapters, Garrett discusses a different way angels are presented in various types of modern and ancient literature. Each chapter rejects the metaphysic or ideology of recent accounts of angels by contrasting them with biblical parallels. Garrett’s confessional commitments remain clear throughout, particularly when she describes how biblical writers use angel language to identify Jesus and when she evaluates the tenets of popular spirituality.

Garrett first treats presentations of angels as healers and revealers of truth. She finds that the popular literature about such angels presents them as guides to self-actualization and propo-nents of personal autonomy. By contrast, biblical encounters with the “angel of the lord” affect the good of the people as a whole rather than individual self-fulfillment. This contrast, she argues, indicates that the descriptions of these angels today are reflections of our cul-ture’s radical individualism. She notes that the NT presents Jesus as healer and revealer, but different from these angels in that he comes in the flesh. Furthermore, his coming does not serve individual wants, but rather demands a reorientation of our desires.

In her treatment of angels who bring people into the divine presence, Garrett observes that today’s angels call people to look within for truth, because they assume a monism that iden-tifies the human soul as a piece of the divine. She identifies this New Age understanding of God and self with ancient (and modern) Gnosticism. In such accounts, the human problem is ignorance. Thus, angels tell people to rid themselves of Judeo-Christian values that burden them and to recognize the divine within themselves. Biblical accounts of the glory of God, however, convey a sense of human frailty and sinfulness in the face of the divine, even as they offer access to divine grace. Garrett argues that early Christians identified Christ with manifestations of the glory of God when they spoke of Jesus’ exaltation to the right hand of God. Thus, while he is described with language used of angels, this position makes him superior to all angel-like beings.

The popular media portrays angels who leave the heavenly world to participate in the earthly realm as beings who overcome the spirit/matter divide and find fulfillment in acceding to desire. Ancient depictions of angels crossing that boundary condemn such actions as rebellion against the divinely ordained cosmic order. This difference shows that popular spirituality teaches that things of the world bring fulfillment, while the biblical stories warn of terrible consequences that follow unrestrained desire. Like movie angels, Jesus becomes human; unlike them, Jesus gives up his desires in order to accept God’s will. Such an image of Jesus indicates that being open to God’s love, rather than fulfilling desires, constitutes the way to salvation.

Through the first half of the book, Garrett seems to assume the correctness of the biblical position on the issues she addresses. When she turns to her discussion of Satan and the powers of evil, however, she grounds the correctness of her views in their correspondence with human experience and the nature of the world, as well as in Scripture. Here she directs her attention to the widely divergent views within Christianity rather than surveying how spiritual powers are discussed in other forms of spirituality. She contrasts Tim LaHaye’s image of the devil launching an attack against humans with Walter Wink’s demythologized view of the powers as institutional structures. She argues for a middle ground that recognizes both the systemic evil of institutional structures and the “out there” (p. 131) aspect of evil. Follow-ing a brief history of the development of the figure of Satan, Garrett cites NT texts that identify Jesus as the ruler of angels whom the powers oppose. She argues that Christ’s lord-ship over the powers becomes visible in the believer’s ability to endure suffering, not in being free of it.

Garrett’s chapter on guardian angels traces their history from Socrates’ daimonion through the Shepherd of Hermas and Pseudo-Dionysius’ influence on the medieval period. She sketches the differences between Catholic and Protestant ideas about them from the beginning of the Reformation through the twentieth century. She finds two types of guardian angels in today’s literature: “search-and-rescue angels” and “therapist angels” (p. 162). Her analysis of exper-iences of the former finds that their actions create questions about divine providence. The therapist type, she says, are most popular among those disaffected with organized religion. They usually stress the divinity of the person to whom they appear. Thus, she argues, such messages show that a core disagreement between Christianity and such popular spirituality involves their understandings of human nature. This chapter identifies Jesus as the guardian of humanity— as the guardian angel par excellence. But this angel does not spare his charges from suffering; rather, he suffers with them.

The final chapter traces the history of ideas about the angel of death, concluding that two primary images are dominant today: the grim reaper and the kindly guide of souls. Garrett faults near-death experience authors and other purveyors of pop spirituality for diminishing the reality of the pain of death when they assert that at death people merely move from the bodily phase of existence to a place not far removed. The dead remain close enough to communicate and to assure us that the immortal spirit triumphs over bodily existence. She asserts that it can be proper to speak of the angelification of Jesus only if it metaphorically means that he reflects God’s glory. Readers of this discussion may wish Garrett had been more forthcoming about whether she thinks angels from the heavenly realm genuinely break into this world. She does assert that the miraculous is possible, basing that claim on the reality of the incarnation, but she goes no further.

This book begins as an investigation of angels that works from an explicit confessional base. Then, each chapter devotes more attention to proper Christian understanding of the issues raised by a particular type of angelic manifestation, until the final pages become a manifesto of a vibrant Christian faith. This faith seeks to offer a credible interpretation of the world that is consistent with the realities of suffering, evil, and death on the one hand, and the hope and promise of the gospel on the other. The interpretation Garrett offers relies upon good biblical exegesis and a broad knowledge of Christian history.

This book does not attempt values-neutral study, but it is good historical and analytical scholarship. Some readers will find Garrett’s theological stance impossible to affirm. Those who find Bultmann and Wink on the right track when they fully demythologize the powers, for example, will find the theological outlook Garrett proffers untenable. Those who see a world more like that of LaHaye will be equally dissatisfied. Overall, she rejects the empiricism of modernism, as well as the narcissism of our culture’s dominant individualism and tendency to divinize humanity, in favor of a faith that leaves more of an opening for divine activity in the world. This stance demands a recognition of the distinction and distance between God and humanity.

Whether or not readers accept Garrett’s theological stance, she provides a careful and con-vincing analysis of the theological issues that accounts of angelic encounters raise and address. This excellent book, then, provides all readers with solid analysis of New Age and popular spirituality. Garrett helps Christians recognize what is at stake in the theologies of those move-ments. Those who own the theological stance she advances will find powerful affirmation of its consistency with Scripture and its ability to interpret the world and our present experience of God.

Jerry L. Sumney
Lexington Theological Seminary
Lexington, Kentucky

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