Discovering the Future: Scribal Prophecy and Wisdom Instruction in Demotic and Biblical Literature
Start: March 2022
In prophetic and wisdom texts, comparable structural phenomena between Demotic and biblical literature are found. Biblical Hebrew and Demotic texts from both genres testify to an increased interest on the part of the scribes in the (nation’s) future. This means that traditional scribal patterns are transformed in order to accommodate visions of a distant future, while at the same time incorporating aspects of traditional wisdom. Wisdom literature itself is the subject of significant transformations in the period of interest: Demotic and biblical wisdom books, such as the Great Demotic Wisdom Book (Papyrus Insinger) or the book of Proverbs from the Hebrew Bible, present a fundamental critique of the foundations of sapiential thought. One of the working hypotheses of DEMBIB is that the developments in Prophetic and Wisdom texts from the Persian and Hellenistic eras can be understood as two sides of the same coin, both having been produced by scribal elites under the influence of foreign rule and increasing globalization.
Research Team:
Dr. Petra Schmidtkunz (2.1)
Robert Kade (2.2)