Psalms and Wisdom Quotes

“If, then, we place an adjective of locality before wisdom - such as Chinese wisdom, Indian wisdom, Greek wisdom - we cannot mean by that a kind of wisdom valid solely in that place. It simply means that those specific wisdom sayings were developed in that area; their value, however, is universal.”
― Paul Nadim Tarazi, Psalms and Wisdom

“That the recollection of God’s deeds constitutes thanksgiving and praise to him is understandable. What is amazing, however, is that Old Testament psalmody also includes, in Ps. 78, teaching material (see vv. 1-4) consisting of a mere recitation of divine deeds. Since this psalm essentially ‘defines’ God and Israel for the congregation, it must be that the very act of definition became a necessary liturgical action in nascent Judaism. And it became necessary because the divine deeds and history that were to be remembered were in fact anti-deeds and anti-history, i.e. an impossibility from the human perspective. Whereas the simple appellation “God” or “Lord” was self-explanatory and thus sufficient in pre-exilic Jerusalem, where the deity was enthroned in the visible temple of a tangible nation, the anti-historical God of nascent Judaism had to be constructed time and again as a reality in the mind of the gathered congregation. This action was an absolute necessity because this congregation of Israel was itself a product of God in that it came into being against its own will. Without this definition of God there would be no congregation to begin with! Put otherwise, the recollection of the divine anti-deeds and Israel’s stubborn resistance to them was the sine qua non condition, the basis for every prayer in nascent Judaism; in such recollection lay the definition and ultimately the very presence of both Israel’s God and God’s Israel.”
― Paul Nadim Tarazi, Psalms and Wisdom