WWisdom literature is a genre of literature common in the ancient Near East. It consists of statements by sages and the wise that offer teachings about divinity and virtue. Although this genre uses techniques of traditional oral storytelling, it was disseminated in written form.
WThe Book of Tobit tells how God tests the faithful, responds to prayers, and protects the covenant community. It tells the story of two Jewish families, that of the blind Tobit in Nineveh and of the abandoned Sara in Ecbatana. Tobit's son Tobias is sent to retrieve ten silver talents that Tobias once left in Rages, a town in Media; guided and aided by the angel Raphael he arrives in Ecbatana, where he meets Sarah. A demon named Asmodeus has fallen in love with her and kills anyone she intends to marry, but with the aid of Raphael the demon is exorcised and Tobias and Sarah marry, after which they return to Nineveh where Tobit is cured of his blindness.
WEcclesiastes written c. 450–200 BCE, is one of the "Wisdom" books of the Old Testament. The title commonly used in English is a Latin transliteration of the Greek translation of the Hebrew word קֹהֶלֶת. An unnamed author introduces "Kohelet" as the son of David (1:1) and does not use his own voice again until the final verses (12:9–14), where he gives his own thoughts and summarises the statements of "Kohelet"; the main body of the text is ascribed to Kohelet himself.
WAn exemplum is a moral anecdote, brief or extended, real or fictitious, used to illustrate a point. The word is also used to express an action performed by another and used as an example or model.
WHávamál is presented as a single poem in the Codex Regius, a collection of Old Norse poems from the Viking age. The poem, itself a combination of numerous shorter poems, is largely gnomic, presenting advice for living, proper conduct and wisdom. It is considered an important source of Old Norse philosophy.
WThe Hermetica are the philosophical texts attributed to the legendary Hellenistic figure Hermes Trismegistus. These texts may vary widely in content and purpose, but are usually subdivided into two main categories:The "technical" Hermetica: this category contains treatises dealing with astrology, medicine and pharmacology, alchemy, and magic, the oldest of which were written in Greek and may go back as far as to the second or third century BCE. Many of the texts belonging to this category were later translated into Arabic and Latin, often being extensively revised and expanded throughout the centuries. Some of them were also originally written in Arabic, though in many cases their status as an original work or translation remains unclear. These Arabic and Latin Hermetic texts were widely copied throughout the Middle Ages. The "philosophical" Hermetica: this category contains religio-philosophical treatises which were mostly written in the second and third centuries CE, though the very earliest of them may go back to the first century CE. They are chiefly focused on the relationship between human beings, the cosmos, and God, and on moral exhortations calling for a way of life leading to spiritual rebirth, and eventually to apotheosis in the form of a heavenly ascent. The treatises in this category were probably all originally written in Greek, even though some of them only survive in Coptic, Armenian, or Latin translations. During the Middle Ages, most of them were only accessible to Byzantine scholars, until a compilation of Greek Hermetic treatises known as the Corpus Hermeticum was translated into Latin by the Renaissance scholars Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) and Lodovico Lazzarelli (1447–1500).
WHujjat al-Din Abu Abdallah Muhammad ibn Abi Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Zafar al-Siqilli, commonly known simply as Ibn Zafar al-Siqilli, was a philosopher, polymath and Arab-Sicilian politician of the Norman period, and has come to be known in the West as "Niccolò Machiavelli's Arab Precursor".
WThe Book of Job is a book of the Hebrew Bible. It addresses the problem of theodicy, meaning why God permits evil in the world, through the experiences of the eponymous protagonist. Job is a wealthy and God-fearing man with a comfortable life and a large family; God, having asked Satan for his opinion of Job's piety, decides to take away Job's wealth, family and material comforts, following Satan's accusation that if Job were rendered penniless and without his family, he would turn away from God. The book is found in the Ketuvim ("Writings") section of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), and is the first poetic book in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. Job lived around the time of Abraham, therefore making the book one of the oldest writings of ancient history.
WAbu al-Wafa' al-Mubashshir ibn Fatik was an Arab philosopher and scholar well versed in the mathematical sciences and also wrote on logic and medicine. He was born in Damascus but lived mainly in Egypt during the 11th century Fatimid Caliphate. He also wrote an historical chronicle of the reign of al-Mustansir Billah. However, the book he is famed for and the only one extant, Kitāb mukhtār al-ḥikam wa-maḥāsin al-kalim, the "Selected Maxims and Aphorisms", is a collection of sayings attributed to the ancient sages translated into Arabic. The date of composition given by the author is 1048–1049.
WNizami Ganjavi, Nizami Ganje'i, Nizami, or Nezāmi, whose formal name was Jamal ad-Dīn Abū Muḥammad Ilyās ibn-Yūsuf ibn-Zakkī, was a 12th-century Persian Sunni Muslim poet. Nezāmi is considered the greatest romantic epic poet in Persian literature, who brought a colloquial and realistic style to the Persian epic. His heritage is widely appreciated and shared by Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Iran, the Kurdistan region and Tajikistan.
WThe Proverbia Grecorum is an anonymous Latin collection of proverbs compiled in the seventh or eighth century AD in the British Isles, probably in Ireland. Despite the name, it has no known Greek source. It was perhaps designed as a secular complement to the Hebrew Bible's Book of Proverbs.
WThe Book of Proverbs is a book in the third section of the Hebrew Bible and a book of the Christian Old Testament. When translated into Greek and Latin, the title took on different forms: in the Greek Septuagint (LXX) it became Παροιμίαι ; in the Latin Vulgate the title was Proverbia, from which the English name is derived.
WHakim Abul-Majd Majdūd ibn Ādam Sanā'ī Ghaznavi, more commonly known as Sanai, was a Persian poet from Ghazni who lived his life in the Ghaznavid Empire at the time of its golden age, in medieval Khorasan, which is now located in Afghanistan. He was born in 1080 and died between 1131 and 1141.
WThe Book of Sirach, also called the Wisdom of Sirach or simply Sirach, and also known as the Book of Ecclesiasticus or Ben Sira, is a Jewish work originally in Hebrew of ethical teachings, from approximately 200 to 175 BC, written by the Jewish scribe Ben Sira of Jerusalem, on the inspiration of his father Joshua son of Sirach, sometimes called Jesus son of Sirach or Yeshua ben Eliezer ben Sira.
WThe Vitae Patrum is an encyclopedia of hagiographical writings on the Desert Fathers and Desert Mothers of early Christianity. The bulk of the original texts date from the third and fourth centuries. The Lives that were originally written in Greek were translated into Latin between the fourth and the seventh century. An Italian vernacular translation was made by Dominican friar Domenico Cavalca from Pisa at the beginning of the fourteenth century.
WThe Book of Wisdom, or the Wisdom of Solomon, is a Jewish work written in Greek and most likely composed in Alexandria, Egypt. Generally dated to the mid first century BC, the central theme of the work is "Wisdom" itself, appearing under two principal aspects. In its relation to man, Wisdom is the perfection of knowledge of the righteous as a gift from God showing itself in action. In direct relation to God, Wisdom is with God from all eternity. It is one of the seven Sapiential or wisdom books comprising the Septuagint, the others being Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Job, and Sirach. It is included in the canon of Deuterocanonical books by the Roman Catholic Church and the anagignoskomena of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Most Protestants consider it part of the Apocrypha.