Old Testament Wisdom: The Storyteller's Companion to the Bible, Vol. 5

A.J. Pell is the rector of Holy Trinity Cathedral, Diocese of New
Westminster in British Columbia.

This fifth volume in the Storyteller’s Companion to the Bible series
examines five books of Hebrew wisdom literature through story. The books
are Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes from the Old Testament, and
Ecclesiastes and The Wisdom of Solomon from the Apocrypha. The story
approach to the wisdom literature of the Bible was inspired by the
Jewish Midrash, stories that were recorded in Jewish circles from AD 400
to 1200 for the displaced Jews in Christian Europe; these stories were
intended to shed light on part of the Hebrew scriptures.

In this volume, a historical and literary introduction prefaces the
treatment of each of the five books. This introduction is followed by a
series of chapters, each of which deals with a passage from the book as
found in The Revised Common Lectionary. A typical chapter begins with
the text of the passage from The Revised English Bible. A section
entitled “Comments on the Story” then casts the text in a narrative
exegetical light. The chapter’s closing section, “Retelling the
Story,” provides a story to bring out the teaching of the passage. The
hit-and-miss quality of these stories does not seriously detract from
the volume’s illumination of Jewish writings.