THE PHILOSOPHY OF WISDOM

In the beginning the elohim created skies and earth.

          Welcome back. Yesterday was my nine year wedding anniversary.  My beloved selfmate and I celebrated, so I did not post. Of course, I realize I should celebrate my marriage every year and day and hour and minute and second, but I have work and other stuff to do. I feel bad about it sometimes, but it can’t be helped. That being said, let's think about philosophy and wisdom.

          There’s a redundant relationship between philosophy and wisdom. Philosophy literally means "love of wisdom.”  When we think of philosophy we think of the Greeks first because they are the first philosophers of Western Civilization. After Plato and Aristotle we find many notable philosophers emerging among the British, the Germans, one Danish guy, a handful of French thinkers, a few boring Americans who are logical positivists and a few interesting Americans who are not.

          There is much wisdom in philosophy, and it would be obvious to us, were we not distracted by philosophers' attempts to explain the nature of reality.

          Wisdom as wisdom belongs to religion. Hebrew and Jewish writers wrote wisdom texts. Just about every sentence in Buddhist and Hindu texts contains wisdom. The Koran is so much like the Bible it would be folly to think there is no wisdom there. Shintoism, Confucianism, Taoism, Zoroastrianism, and other isms have given us texts that admonish us how to live.

          What does this say about humanity and humanity's religions that so much wisdom exists among all the spiritual traditions of the world?

          We do not have to look very far to find wisdom in the Bible. Wisdom is a tradition all its own that speaks to us along with Israel’s other traditions:  the Deuteronomic Tradition, the Priestly Tradition, the Prophetic Tradition, the Apocalyptic Tradition, and the Christian Tradition. Among them all the Wisdom Tradition is a river of life flowing concurrently with all the other traditions since the first stories were told and then written down centuries later. I would argue that the Wisdom Tradition transformed from river of life to word of life in the Christian Tradition.

           The Wisdom Tradition was a genuine alternative to the Apocalyptic Tradition, as it is today. Personally, I care not for the latter. It frames false hopes in superstitious language.  It makes lousy preachers, excellent dupes, and inane books; although I will admit apocalypticism inspires exciting fiction and movies. 

          The Apocalyptic Tradition is pessimistic.  It preaches that creation is so crappy God has to come and make it clean again, or to put it a Jewish way, the world is so impure, God must send his Messiah to make it kosher again. There is no hope for human effort.  Apocalypticism relies on magical thinking, numerology, and Arnold Schwarzenegger for validation. 

          If you are Jewish the end times will be gingerbread clocks and treacle tarts. Original apocalypticism imagines a future when Jewish people will be in power, ruled by a King David-like Messiah, and all of us unclean Gentiles will use separate restrooms. Christian apocalypti-cism restores Gentiles to their accustomed place of power, and Jewish people have hell to pay.

           Personally, I believe a Jewish king would be better than all these trigger happy Gentiles murdering each other daily. I'd be willing to use an unclean restroom as long as it was sanitary and King David took away the Gentiles' weapons.

          The Bible offers another way. Wisdom is an alternative to the Apocalyptic Tradition. Wisdom is an optimistic philosophy. It posits a creation that is good. True, there is evil, but it never lasts. Hitlers come and go, but the goodness of creation lasts forever. Stalins can be prevented. Pol Pots can be extinguished. Only the good remains in the world long after evil has departed for another time and place. 

          
          Thus, speaks the Wisdom Tradition.

          The primary wisdom texts in the Jewish Bible are Job, Proverbs, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Wisdom of Solomon, and Ecclesiasticus. These works preach the philosophy of the Jewish people. There's a reason why they clash with the other, more storied traditions. Wisdom by its nature lights up the shadows of that which is perishing.

          Wisdom exists in other Jewish writings. The Midrash and Talmud are full of words and stories that seek to ask and answer existential questions. Furthermore, there have been Jewish philosophers like Spinoza who write about the nature of reality as well as the nature of wisdom. 

          In the Christian Bible, the Q Gospel embedded in Luke and Matthew, as well as the Gospel of Thomas, are wisdom texts. Like the Jewish Bible, wisdom can be found in all books of the Christian Bible. Hence, I would argue, philosophy is as biblical as it gets insofar as wisdom is loved in the Bible.

          Next time, I’ll explain the relationship between wisdom and truth.

          Blessings…