Bogoslovska smotra, Vol. 91 No. 2, 2021.
Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.53745/bs.91.2.1
From Feathers in Wind to Feathers in the Pillow and Back. The Return of Wisdom from the Social Elite to the People
Dubravko Turalija
; The Catholic Faculty of Theology University of Sarajevo, Bosna and Herzegovina
Abstract
Wisdom is the original, oral, and progressive Divine gift offered to all people. However, in the Antique understanding of the history of the Middle East, there was a discontinuity or interruption of fluctuation and advance of wisdom. Through the Great Flood, the overall wisdom has been reduced, i.e., segmented from the wide spectrum of oral to the narrow spectrum of written and, consequently, from the massive to the individual tradition. Hence, the wisdom until the Flood is not the same as the wisdom after the Flood. The Bible does not follow faithfully that Eastern, or, more precisely, Mesopotamian theme. What the Antique Eastern literature ascribes to Ziasudra, Utnapishtim, Atrahasis, and, later on, to Greek Ksisoteros, the Bible does not ascribe to its protagonist of the first covenant, Noah, but to the protagonist of the new covenant, Moses. According to the Biblical teaching, Moses was the one, and not Noah, who directly received secrets of the Divine wisdom, which he recorded and, therefore, segregated in the written Law. The character of the written Law is literacy and, hence, it cannot concern everybody. Literacy was originally tied to Moses and Aaron, then transmitted to the rest of the priestly caste, and later on to kings and other renowned persons among the people. Thus, wisdom as a Divine gift became a characteristic of only the social elite. In order to balance the relationship between Divine wisdom and human nature, the holy writers introduced the term "fear of God". Only those who cultivated within themselves the fear of God could also possess the Divine wisdom. By making such a move, the Biblical writers excluded many renowned persons from the source of Divine wisdom and allowed all those characterized by the epithet (…) - »humility« - access to the Divine wisdom.
Keywords
Mesopotamia; Moses; wisdom; Noah; humility; Flood; righteousness; Salomon; fear of God; Utnapishtim.
Hrčak ID:
266289
URI
Publication date:
29.7.2021.
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