Wisdom in Classical and Biblical Tradition

Wisdom in Classical and Biblical Tradition begins with the recognition that modern culture emerged from a synthesis of the legacies of ancient Greek civilization and the theological perspectives of the Jewish and Christian scriptures. Part of what made this synthesis possible was a shared outlook: a common aspiration toward wholeness of understanding that refused to separate knowledge from goodness, virtue from happiness, cosmos from polis, and divine authority from human responsibility. This wholeness of understanding, or wisdom, featured prominently in both classical and biblical literatures as an ultimate good. Michael Legaspi has two central aims. The first is to explain in formal terms what wisdom is. Though wisdom involves matters of practical judgment affecting the life of the individual and the community, it has also been identified with an understanding of the world and of the ultimate realities that give meaning to human thought and action. In its traditional form, wisdom was understood to govern intellectual, social, and ethical endeavors. His second aim is to analyze figures and texts that have yielded and shaped the traditional understanding of wisdom. The book examines accounts of wisdom within foundational texts that range from the period of Homer to the destruction of the Second Temple. In doing so, it explains why the search for wisdom remains an important but problematic endeavor today.

About the Author :
Michael C. Legaspi is Associate Professor of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies at Penn State University, and the author of The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies.

Review :
"The idea of 'metaphysical vulnerability' (see especially pp. 105-7) that Legaspi employs to interpret Job and the Hebrew bible is particularly striking. Placing Socrates in the midst of Jewish and Christian religious writings, and foregrounding the religious nature of Socrates' teaching (111) may well be unfamiliar to many classicists but allow us to look at some of Plato's dialogues in a new light." -- Stuart R. Thomson, Classics for all "This superb monograph is an important contribution to our understanding of wisdom in the ancient world." -- Bradley C. Gregory, The Catholic Biblical Quarterly "Wisdom in Classical and Biblical Tradition succeeds in illustrating several facets of wisdom, a concept that is notoriously difficult to define. Legaspi's definition of wisdom as "a program for life" is refreshing and opens new avenues for research, instead of being mired with the perennial-and non-productive-question of defining wisdom as a genre or category of literature." -- Elisa Uusim�ki, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, Reading Religion "Michael Legaspi takes his readers on a wonderfully erudite yet accessible tour of the world of wisdomwisdom as understood by Greeks, Jews, and Christians at the formative origins of Western civilization. The probing history of ideas is accompanied by a subtle analysis that suggests ways of recognizing some of the ancient conceptions as still present in the world of today. An illuminating book."--Walter Moberly, Professor of Theology & Biblical Interpretation, Durham University "Summing up: Recommended" -- CHOICE "As usual, Michael Legaspi has painted a broad canvas for us, surveying the ways in which the search for wisdom was pursued in ancient Israel and ancient Greece. Biblicists and classicists will be grateful for this book's sustained engagement with the others' discipline; the results are consistently insightful."--James Kugel, author of The Great Shift: Encountering God in Biblical Times "The roots of wisdom discourse in antiquity, both Jewish and Greek, run more deeply and widely within the soil of classical culture than most of us are able to trace. Michael Legaspi's impressive and discerning book does this work in knowledgeable detail, and with deep seriousness about the search for wholeness of understanding. He makes intellectual history matter for understanding biblical wisdom."--Jennie Grillo, author of The Story of Israel in the Book of Qohelet