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22 July 2022
The Book of Proverbs is not quite like any other book in the Hebrew Bible. Like Qoheleth, it is what you might call Wisdom Literature. Proverbs is written in the form of advice from a father (Solomon), addressed to an anonymous "son" (Rehoboam?). Modern scholarship sees it as a later composition which uses Solomon as its fictitious author.
It was a bit of a generalization to say that the book presents itself as the words of Solomon. More precisely, the book contains various superscriptions, with the largest bits attributed to Solomon.
Modern scholarship has abandoned the idea that Solomon is an author of Proverbs. There is little agreement on exactly when it was written, but most authors agree that it was composed by multiple authors over a significant amount of time.[1] They mostly agree that 1-9 are the latest part of the book, though as we will see below, Michael Fox puts the contents of 30 and 31 later than 1-9.
Michael Fox[2] puts the authorship of the main material in 10-29 within the Jerusalem court. 1-9, on his reading, are a later introduction to 10-29. 10-29, as he sees it, consist of four collections (10:1-22:16, 22:17-24:22, 24:23-34, 25-29), respectively attributed by Proverbs to "Solomon", "the wise", "the wise" (again), and Hezekiah's court. Four small sections were later added at the end: Agur (30:1-9), "Epigrams and Aphorisms" (30:10-33), Lemuel's mother (31:1-9), and the "Woman of Strength" (31:10-31).
Fox's divisions overlap with the explicit words of the text in several places. 1-9 is introduced as "proverbs of Solomon" (1:1), and 10:1 contains similar wording. Why would a section introduced as "Proverbs of Solomon" need to be followed by one called "Proverbs of Solomon"? It is odd, no? But as Fox points out, 1-9 is very different from 10:1-22:16. The former is an extended and very theological presentation of what wisdom is and why you might want it. The latter is a loosely connected bunch of short (mostly two-line) poetic dollops of wisdom. These dollops are not particularly systematic in their relationship to one another, nor do they talk much about theology. It makes sense that 1-9 might be a prologue written as a forward to the material that follows it. The rest of 10-29, by the way, share the couplet-based nature of 10:1-22:16.
There's a further redundancy between 22:17-24:22 and 24:23-24:34, the first "sayings of the wise" and the second "also of the wise". Like in the case of 1:1 and 10:1, the repetition of similar headings suggests that these are originally two different collections put together later. Either that, or the short "also of the wise" was an addition tacked on, written by someone familiar with the "sayings of the wise". I'm not remotely qualified to pass judgment on the question, and maybe even raising it shows my ignorance.
The four half-chapter blocks of text that Fox distinguishes in 30 and 31 are different from 10-29. Like 1-9, they contain extended continued thoughts that go well past couplets.
The authorial voice introduces 22:17-24:22 as "the sayings of the wise" (22:17) and possibly as "thirty sayings" (22:20).[3]
The historical process, if I'm looking at it right, looks a little bit like that of modern books. 10-29 is like a classic book that has been reprinted. Where do we add new material when we reprint a book that is no longer current? The beginning or the end. Often a work of historical importance, like Huckleberry Finn, finds itself reprinted with a foreword by some later author who explains its basic meaning and evaluates its significance to the new and later audience. Similar things are done with afterwards, though on this end we can't push the metaphor too far -- 30 and 31 are additions to the main bulk of 10-29, but they are supplements rather than an Afterword in the modern sense.
Toy, Crawford Howell (1908). A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Proverbs.
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