Wisdom Literature

Wisdom Literature sites are held apart from the surrounding genre headings because their own didactic form, a father's counsel to a son, an elder's counsel to the young, on honest conduct, humility and right dealing with the poor and the powerful, sets them apart from myth, treatise, chronicle and code alike. A work here teaches how to live rather than narrating a god's deeds, arguing a doctrine, recording a reign or codifying a law. The genre spans traditions and periods, from Egyptian scribal instruction to the Hebrew wisdom books, and a text belongs here for its form rather than for the religion that produced it.