The sages at Qumran: Wisdom in the 'Hodayot'.

摘要

Wisdom literature has long been recognized as a significant aspect of the culture of the Ancient Near East. In ancient Israel, this literature was an important vehicle for primarily secular, cultural, and ethical values. What is less well known and little studied is the pervasive influence of wisdom literature in the Hellenistic period.;In order to begin to clarify the complex nature and function of Wisdom in the Hellenistic period, I have focused my attention on a single community: Qumran, and within that community, on 1QH;The first four chapters of the dissertation provide a detailed study of 1QH. Chapter One, "Hodayot in Which the Presence of Wisdom is Strong," identifies the characteristics of those Hodayot in which wisdom elements (forms, themes, words) are most pervasive. Chapter Two, "Non-Wisdom Hodayot," looks at those compositions at the opposite end of the scale, in which the phenomenon of Wisdom is negligible at best. Having established the contrast between these two groups of compositions, in Chapter Three I examine the characteristics of the largest group of Hodayot, "Hodayot in Which the Presence of Wisdom is Limited." Chapter Four, "Conclusions to the Study of 1QH," includes both general conclusions as well as final observations about the presence of Wisdom in 1QH. Chapter Five, "The Sages at Qumran," considers those important issues about Wisdom which deserve further scrutiny and provides a cursory glance at the presence of Wisdom in the remaining Qumran texts.;Finally, one should note that the order of the dissertation represents a reversal of that found in previous studies of the Qumran corpus and Wisdom. It starts with 1QH and the other texts of the Qumran community and reconstructs from them, a posteriori, a working definition of the presence of Wisdom (and the criteria by which one establishes it), instead of beginning with standard a priori definitions. This allows one to account more fully for the developments at Qumran and in the Hellenistic period.