Goochem in Mokum Wisdom in Amsterdam: Papers on Biblical and Related Wisdom Read at the Fifteenth Joint Meeting of the Society for Old Testament Study and the Oudtestamentisch Werkgezelschap, Amsterdam, July 2012

189 Pages·2016·1.27 MB·English

by  George J. Brooke

Goochem in Mokum
Wisdom in Amsterdam
Oudtestamentische Studiën
Old Testament Studies published on behalf of the Societies
for Old Testament Studies in the Netherlands and
Belgium, South Africa, the United Kingdom and Ireland
Editor
B. Becking (Utrecht)
Editorial Board
P. Van Hecke (Leuven)
H.F. Van Rooy (Potchefstroom)
H.G.M. Williamson (Oxford)
Volume 68
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ots
Goochem in Mokum
Wisdom in Amsterdam
Papers on Biblical and Related Wisdom Read at the
Fifteenth Joint Meeting of the Society for Old Testament
Study and the Oudtestamentisch Werkgezelschap,
Amsterdam, July 2012
Edited by
George J. Brooke and Pierre Van Hecke
with the assistance of
Bob Becking and Eibert Tigchelaar
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Joint Meeting of the Society for Old Testament Study and the
 Oudtestamentisch Werkgezelschap in Nederland en België (15th : 2012 :
 Amsterdam, Netherlands) | Brooke, George J., editor. | Hecke, P. van
 (Pierre), editor.
Title: Goochem in mokum, wisdom in Amsterdam : papers on biblical and related
 wisdom read at the fifteenth joint meeting of the Society of Old Testament
 study and the Oudtestamentisch Werkgezelschap, Amsterdam, July 2012 /
 edited by George J. Brooke and Pierre van Hecke ; with the assistance of
Bob Becking and Eibert Tigchelaar.
Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2016] | Series: Oudtestamentische
 studiën = Old Testament studies, ISSN 0169-7226 ; v. 68 | Includes
 bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016001752 (print) | LCCN 2016013891 (ebook) | ISBN
 9789004314764 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9789004314771 (E-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Wisdom—Biblical teaching—Congresses. | Bible. Old
 Testament—Criticism, interpretation, etc.—Congresses.
Classification: LCC BS1199.W57 J65 2016 (print) | LCC BS1199.W57 (ebook) |
 DDC 223/.06–dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016001752
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Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.
issn 0169-7226
isbn 978-90-04-31476-4 (hardback)
isbn 978-90-04-31477-1 (e-book)
Copyright 2016 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
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Contents
Introduction vii
Bob Becking
The Book of Ben Sira: Some New Perspectives at the Dawn of the
21st Century 1
Pancratius C. Beentjes
The Place of Wisdom in the Formation of the Movement behind the Dead
Sea Scrolls 20
George J. Brooke
The Wisdom of Job’s Conclusion (Job 42:1–6) 34
David J.A. Clines
Ecclesiastes as Mainstream Wisdom (Without Job) 43
Katharine J. Dell
Unity, Date, Authorship and the ‘Wisdom’ of the Song of Songs 53
J. Cheryl Exum
The Substance of Job: Beginnings and Endings 69
Jan Fokkelman
An Awfully Beastly Business: Some Thoughts on behēmāh in Jonah and
Qoheleth 82
Alastair G. Hunter
Ecclesiastes Among the Tragedians 95
John Jarick
The Disturbing Experience of Eliphaz in Job 4: Divine or Demonic
Manifestation? 108
Mart-Jan Paul
Acquiring Wisdom: A Semantic Analysis of Its Metaphorical
Conceptualisations 121
Pierre Van Hecke
vi contents
Aristobulus and the Universal Sabbath 138
J. Cornelis de Vos
Divine Judgment and Reward in Ecclesiastes 155
Stuart Weeks
Index of Authors  167
Index of Textual References 170
Introduction
Bob Becking
The fifteenth joint meeting of the Society for Old Testament Study and the
Oudtestamentisch Werkgezelschap took place in the city of Amsterdam as
a satellite programme to the International Meeting of the Society of Biblical
Literature. After the meeting, it was agreed upon that the proceedings
would be published, as usual, in the series Oudtestamentische Studiën/Old
Testament Studies. The chairmen of both societies, George Brooke and Pierre
Van Hecke, accepted the responsibility to act as editors of the volume. Due to
unforeseen circumstances at the personal level, both editors could not find
time enough for the editorial duty they received. The editorial board of the
series Oudtestamentische Studiën/Old Testament Studies was pleased by the
offer of Eibert Tigchelaar to edit the manuscripts. Some of them were already
sent in soon after the meeting and others only after the sixteenth joint meet-
ing took place. We would like to thank Eibert for his generous and unselfish
contribution.
In Bargoens, the cant spoken in Amsterdam in Jewish circles and beyond,
the city of Amsterdam is called Mokum. The word is derived from Hebrew
māqôm. For many Jews Amsterdam was ‘the place’. Other Dutch cities were
also named Mokum: Delft was known as mokum dollet. Amsterdam, however,
is the only city still nicknamed Mokum. The same slang has given the Dutch
language the untranslatable word ‘goochem’. The noun has its roots in Yiddish
and is eventually derived from Hebrew ḥokmāh, ‘wisdom’, and ḥākam, ‘wise’. In
Dutch the word has a positive as well as a negative connotation and refers to
everything between ‘wise’, ‘smart’, and ‘canny’.
In choosing ‘Goochem in Mokum’ as title of this volume the city of
Amsterdam and its long Jewish tradition is honoured. It goes without saying,
that the authors of this volume have taken ‘goochem’ in its positive sense.

The Book of Ben Sira: Some New Perspectives at the
Dawn of the 21st Century
Pancratius C. Beentjes
1 Introduction
The past decades have seen an immense progress in the study of the book of
Ben Sira, which has been amply documented in an avalanche of overviews,
dictionaries, congress volumes, Festschriften, and doctoral theses, as listed in
the appendix to this article. It is impossible, therefore, even to try to present
here an overall view of all those recent publications and their specific topics.
Just one general remark, however, is in order here. The discovery of frag-
ments of a Hebrew Ben Sira scroll at Masada in 1964 by Yigael Yadin,1 the publi-
cation of these fragments,2 as well as the publication of the great Psalms Scroll
from Qumran Cave 11, containing parts of the Hebrew text of Sir. 51:13–30, were
crucial landmarks in the study of the book of Ben Sira.3
The Ben Sira texts from Masada and Qumran provide conclusive evidence
that the Hebrew text of the mediaeval Ben Sira manuscripts, which had been
discovered in the Cairo Genizah in 1896 and later on in a number of libraries,
reflects to a high degree Second Temple forms of the text. As a result, it was no
longer necessary to spend nearly all research time to defend the reliability of
the Hebrew Ben Sira manuscripts.
As a result, from the mid-sixties of the twentieth century onwards, a major
shift in the study of the book of Ben Sira took place. Text critical problems
no longer monopolized the conversation; scholarly research shifted towards
theological and literary topics. The first substantial fruits of this ‘theologi-
cal turnover’ were Josef Haspecker’s dissertation and Johann Marböck’s
Habilitationsschrift.4 Since then, a continuous current of literary, historical,
theological, and sociological studies were brought to the fore.
1  Sir. 39:27–32; 40:10–19; 40:26–44:15.17.
2  Y. Yadin, The Ben Sira Scroll from Masada with Introduction, Emendations and Commentary,
Jerusalem 1965 [= Masada VI, Jerusalem 1999, 151–225].
3  J.A. Sanders, The Psalms Scroll of Qumran Cave 11 (11QPsa) (DJD, 4), Oxford 1965, 79–85.
4  J. Haspecker, Gottesfurcht bei Jesus Sirach: Ihre religiöse Struktur und ihre literarische und dok-
trinäre Bedeutung (AnBib, 30), Rome 1967; J. Marböck, Weisheit im Wandel: Untersuchungen
zur Weisheitstheologie bei Ben Sira (BBB, 37), Bonn 1971 [= BZAW, 272, Berlin 1999].
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