Stephen Pickard | Michael Welker | John Witte (Eds.): The Impact of Education (Leseprobe)

28 Anne W. Stewart
Rather, the book centers on the formation ofwise character in acontext of competing
perspectives, truth claims, and moral worldviews. 6
In part, this dynamic is present in the very nature of the literature itself. The
bulk of the book is acollection of proverbialsayings, which are, for the most part,
not arranged in aclearly delineated structure. Rather, sayings that speak of different
situations and even give contradictory advice sit alongside one another. For
example, Proverbs 26:4advises, “Do not answerfools according to their folly, or
you will be afool yourself.” This saying clearly advises restraint in the presence of
fools and their foolish speech. Yet the very next verse proclaims, “Answer fools
according to their folly, or they will be wise in their own eyes” (Prov. 26:5). This
saying gives the opposite counsel, warning that failing to address fools will simply
leave their foolishness unchecked, in fact risking their further delusion. How,
then, should one proceed?Isafool to be answered or ignored?Ofcourse, the wise
reply requires discernment in light of an actual situation, attendant to the context
and reality of the particular.
Accordingly, the application of the sayings is never abstract. Rather, the right
application of the proverb requires discernment, which relies upon acarefully
honed sense of moral deliberation.Inthis sense, the book acknowledges the ambiguity
of life, for different situations call for different actions. ChristineRoy Yoder
argues that such contradictions serve an important pedagogical function, in
that “they call attention to incongruities in the world; they convey that the arena
of wisdom is replete with competing discourses, with divergent perspectives on
reality and morality.” 7 Yoder argues that the existence of contradictory proverbs
in the collections teaches something about the nature of the moral self:
The sages thereby put readers in aposition where no single response, no one proverb
or perspective, can always work for them. By doing so, they point readers to areality
larger than the proverbs in question: the moral self inevitably holds views that are in
conflict with one another and applies those views depending on the immediate circumstances.
Readers cannot avoid the relativity of human knowledge—the fact that
meaning is contextual. 8
In this way, the book resists simplistic interpretation; instead, it invites thoroughly
contextual ethical reflection. Accordingly, the book of Proverbs is not an in-
6
7
8
See Anne W. Stewart, “Teaching Complex Ethical Thinking with Proverbs,” in The Cambridge
Companion to the Hebrew Bible and Ethics, ed. Carly L. Crouch (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2021), 241–56.
Christine Roy Yoder, “Forming ‘Fearers of Yahweh’: Repetition and Contradiction as
Pedagogy in Proverbs,” in Seeking Out the Wisdom of the Ancients, ed. Ronald Troxel et
al. (Ann Arbor, MI: Winona Lake Eisenbrauns, 2005), 180.
Yoder, “Forming ‘Fearers of Yahweh,’” 181.