Contradiction in the Book of Proverbs

The Deep Waters of Counsel

Despite the welcome revival of scholarly interest in Biblical Wisdom, the Book of Proverbs remains neglected. It continues to be seen as a disorganised repository of traditional banalities, while Job and Qohelet are viewed as more exciting texts, in revolt against Proverbs' conventional wisdom. Contradiction in the Book of Proverbs argues that this misleading consensus owes more to scholarly presuppositions than to the content of Proverbs; it sees Proverbs as a challenging work, one that aims to provoke a critical appropriation of wisdom and in which diverse sources have been skilfully brought together by a creative final editor to form a complex unity. Many divergences from the Hebrew in the Greek witness to the translator's discomfort with his spikey, provocative original. Peter Hatton challenges many existing scholarly assumptions and calls for a re-evaluation of the role and significance of Proverbs in relation to the other biblical wisdom books and the whole canon.