The Teachings of Silvanus

Previous research on the Teachings of Silvanus has led to the generally accepted conclusion that the present form of the work is the result of a long textual development. Because of the text’s close relationship with the biblical and Hellenistic-Jewish Wisdom literature, it has been suggested that its earliest form was a Jewish sapiential writing, which over a long period of time was Christianised by the addition of New Testament material and Christian theological speculations. In the present study, the problem of the Teachings’ textual development is approached from a literary analysis of the text. It is argued that the work contains many instances of parallelismus membrorum, which in some cases are closely interwoven with biblical and Jewish sapiential texts and in other cases are abruptly broken up by Christian interpolations.