The Literary Structure of the Book of Wisdom

In its important document issued in 1993, The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, the Pontifical Biblical Commission devoted a paragraph (I, B, 1) to rhetorical analysis, making a distinction between the classical rhetoric of Greece and Rome, the literary biblical tradition of Semitic provenance, and the so-called “new rhetoric”. When there is question of the Book of Wisdom, written as it was in Greek by a Jew, probably in Alexandria, one can legitimately presume that the rhetoric involved is connected with the classical rhetoric of Greece and Rome, but also with the literary biblical tradition. In fact, according to me, the research made during the past forty years has proved this, even though there are differences of opinions among scholars. In these pages I wish to study some of these differences. Any research of the literary structure of a work presumes that we have before us the text of the work in its original language. This is the case for the Book of Wisdom: the text available to us has been transmitted and transmitted well. We may therefore proceed to a study of its literary structure. Such a study is useful, perhaps indispensable, for an ancient text. Ancient authors did not have the typographical aids which we make use of to organize a discourse and to indicate its several parts. They did not have headings, subheadings, etc., paragraphs, chapters, etc., with the result that for them the only way to indicate the organization of a text was the use of words which are part of the text itself. Repetition of certain words at certain points in a discussion served to indicate a linking between two phases of the argument, or an inclusion which opened and concluded a topic, or the announcement of a theme before it is developed with use of repetition of the key words found in the announcement. By noting the patterns of such repetitions one can see how the ancient author structured his presentation.