Biblical Wisdom and the Hermeneutics of Nostalgia

Biblical Wisdom and the Hermeneutics of Nostalgia explores the literary features and function of wisdom sayings both as individual proverbs and in their context in discourse and anthology. Wisdom is as an expression of traditional culture, meaning it relies on an appropriation of the past to form communal identity. Rather than address this topic directly as a purely historical question, this book examines it obliquely, developing comparative analogies drawn from nineteenth- and twentieth-century European culture to demonstrate how these constructions of the past can shape identity and reading practices. The fairytale, the doll's house, the architectural folly, and the museum collection each provide different expressions of an imagined traditional culture that lay in the background of the origins of modern biblical scholarship in this period and thus can continue to shape our own interpretations. Proverbs are reimagined, not as factual claims about a well-ordered world, but as potential narratives that draw on conventional paradigms to make the world meaningful. So too, the ethical simplicity of wisdom is understood in light of the ideology of idealism embedded in the practice of making miniatures, which transforms the reader through the development of the moral imagination. Biblical wisdom sayings are usually preserved without a performative context, and this literary style is read through the lens of the aesthetics of fragmentation, where wisdom is reconstructed through possible meanings, applications, and interpretations as a means of generating a traditional worldview. Fragmentary sayings are preserved in anthologies, and while scholars have argued over the presence of complex structures, here anthologies are interpreted in light of the function of the collection as a means of preserving the past and enculturating the reader. These approaches to wisdom are drawn together through the unifying theme, where past tradition is read in a nostalgic mode, using memory, idealism, and repetition to construct in the reader a sense of shared identity and belonging.

Hans Decker is an American academic working as a postdoctoral researcher focused on issues related to hermeneutics, tradition, and ethical reading in the book of Jonah. He did his doctoral work at the University of Oxford, where he worked on hermeneutics and moral formation in the biblical wisdom tradition. Prior to that, he received his Master of Theology degree at Harvard University, with a thesis on metaphor in Qohelet.