Biblical Wisdom and the Hermeneutics of Nostalgia: Rereading the Poetics of the Familiar (Oxford Theology and Religion Monographs)

Biblical Wisdom and the Hermeneutics of Nostalgia explores the literary features and function of wisdom sayings both as individual proverbs and in their context in discourse and anthology.Wisdom is as an expression of traditional culture, meaning it relies on an appropriation of the past to form communal identity.Rather than address this topic directly as a purely historical question, this book examines it obliquely, developing comparative analogies drawn from nineteenth- and twentieth-century European culture to demonstrate how these constructions of the past can shape identity and reading practices.The fairytale, the doll's house, the architectural folly, and the museum collection each provide different expressions of an imagined traditional culture that lay in the background of the origins of modern biblical scholarship in this period and thus can continue to shape our own interpretations.Proverbs are reimagined, not as factual claims about a well-ordered world, but as potential nar