the formation of the bible 35
piety without specifically Jewish traits; parallels with Egyptian wisdom
teachings make it likely that such collections of pithy advice were put
together within scribal schools. The Psalter was probably compiled as a
hymn book for use in the Temple in the Persian period, incorporating a
number of much earlier song collections which in turn combined songs
celebrating royal victories with hymns praising God and songs of collec-
tive and individual lament, trust and thanksgiving.
The Bible is thus an amalgam of styles and genres. Speeches, sermons,
prayers and sayings are juxtaposed with contracts, letters, lists and
laws, and with narratives which vary from myths, such as the story of
the flood and Noah’s ark, to sagas such as the career of Samson in the
book of Judges. There are formal records like the account of Solomon’s
building of the Temple and the reforms instituted by Josiah (which are
likely to come from the Temple annals), and more literary narratives – court
histories like the account of the succession to King David in II Samuel
and I Kings, and the rags- to- riches story of the shepherd boy David’s
rise to power. The Bible also contains a great deal of poetry, often woven
into the narrative as victory songs (such as the song of Deborah in the
book of Judges), as well as mocking songs and funeral dirges (as used
by the prophet Amos to proclaim an imminent catastrophe: ‘Fallen, no
more to rise, is maiden Israel; forsaken on her land, with no one to raise
her up’). The Song of Songs contains an anthology of lyrics celebrating
love and marriage, probably edited into a unified composition contain-
ing a single love story. The book of Job also contains much poetry, but
the tone of the narrative, depicting patience in the face of appalling
adversity to demonstrate that the truly righteous will continue to serve
God even if worship does not profit them, could not contrast more with
the Song of Songs. The spirit of sceptical rationalism and resignation
found in Ecclesiastes, which repeats no fewer than twenty times that ‘All
is vanity,’ offers a similar contrast. The literal sense of the word hevel,
conventionally translated as ‘vanity’, is probably ‘a breath of wind’, sug-
gesting transience, uselessness or deceptiveness.^14
Such a heterogeneous collection of writings – variously comforting,
poetic, instructive, funny and dull – does not lend itself to conceptions
of a unified corpus, and indeed such notions were slow to emerge. In his
preface to Ecclesiasticus, the translation into Greek of the Wisdom of
Ben Sira which was composed later than Ecclesiastes and in more opti-
mistic vein, the grandson of Ben Sira wrote in the late second century
bce about the ‘many great teachings’ which ‘have been given to us
through the Law and the Prophets and the others that followed them’.