An Introduction to Wisdom and Poetry of the Old Testament

An Introduction to Wisdom and Poetry of the Old Testament. By D. K. Berry. Nashville, Tennessee: Broadman and Holman, 1995, 422 pp., $24.99.

Berry's book divides almost evenly into two parts, the first on OT wisdom and the second on OT poetry. The book is wide-ranging in its scope, and in both sections there is an overview of the terrain to be covered followed by a discussion of the comparative ancient Near Eastern material, the history of interpretation of the Biblical material, and then several chapters on the wisdom or poetic texts themselves.

The tables dispersed throughout the text to illustrate Berry's analysis of texts are a great help in this type of wide-ranging introductory volume. The questions at the end of each chapter and the glossary of terms and subject bibliographies at the end of the book also enhance the user-friendly nature of the text for students being introduced to the wisdom and poetry of the OT.

In an introduction of this sort one expects the work to be wide-ranging but in my opinion Berry's book suffers in this respect. Different views tend to be described without a coherent and integrated picture emerging, conceptually the work is sometimes weak by being an uneven synthesis of views rather than a coherently argued piece, and some of the best work that has been done in some areas is not referred to. In the remainder of this review I will give a few salient examples of these deficiencies to substantiate these criticisms.

Berry rightly makes the focus of his attention the canonical wisdom books as we have received them rather than the historical stages underlying them, but when he comes to deal with Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, for example, he never mentions some of the most creative recent work in this area. Berry, in my opinion, does not adequately explore the literary shape of Proverbs as a whole and has no reference to R. van Leeuwen's highly creative work in this area. Van Leeuwen's article on the sage in prophetic literature is referred to in the book but none of his works on the literary shape of Proverbs are mentioned.

As regards Ecclesiastes Berry is really not very helpful in assisting the reader to get an understanding of the book as a whole. All sort of points are made but there is little constructive resolution into a larger whole. Admittedly this remains a difficult issue in Qoheleth scholarship but once again key sources are not referred to. In my opinion M. Fox has done some of the most creative recent work on the literary (and thus canonical) shape of Ecclesiastes, and even if one disagrees with his conclusions-as I do-he has opened up crucial directions for reading Ecclesiastes as a literary whole (cf. e.g. Fox's Qoheleth and his Contradictions, 1989). Berry mentions Fox's work on the Song of Songs but no mention is made of his considerable body of work on Ecclesiastes.

Likewise when it comes to the Psalms, Berry mentions an article by G. Wilson on the shape of the Psalter but never refers to Wilson's more substantial work nor to the highly creative work of scholars like J. C. McCann who are developing ways of reading the Psalms as a whole.

Apart from this type of large omission there are numerous small points that need considerable elaboration if they are to be taken seriously as possible positions. Berry says of Job, for example, that "The pessimistic attitude of the book's poetry reveals a philosophical bent in direct contrast to the positivistic tone of Proverbs" (p. 141). 1 am not convinced that Proverbs is positivistic, nor am I clear that the poetry of Job is philosophically far from Proverbs.

There is a need for the sort of introduction that Berry has set out to write. Students will find this book a help in many ways but books like Murphy's The Tree of Life will remain the more indispensable introductory texts.

Craig Bartholomew

Cheltenham and Gloucester College of Higher Education, Cheltenham, England

Copyright Evangelical Theological Society Dec 1999
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