Wisdom in Antiquity – essay

Wisdom in Antiquity: Philosophy and Religion

by Kathleen Damiani

Wisdom Teachings and Philosophy

Our early ancestors in the ancient Near East (and in the East as well as in indigenous tribes) were concerned with the art of living. Wisdom in antiquity, in its broadest sense, meant the skill of an artisan, sound judgment, and ability to cope with life. Before philosophy and science were formalized, there were precepts on how to live wisely that were passed from generation to generation and loosely called “wisdom teachings.”

The desire to live wisely–to apply thinking and self-reflection to character, fate, and the problem of life–is rooted deep in the earliest teachings of sages to students, found in the wisdom traditions in the ancient Near East. Long before the word philosopher–lover of wisdom–was coined by Pythagoras, the cult of wisdom flourished in the ancient Near East. Feminine wisdom figures–such as Maat in Egypt, Rita (Rta) in India, Tao (Tien) in China, a deified feminine Wisdom figure in Mesopotamia and Syria and Themis in early Greece–personify world order, justice, and law. These figures were not mother goddesses or fertility figures. Although deified, they were not related to or worshipped like other deities. For instance, you would not worship maat; rather, you would “keep” maat.

Teachings from Egyptian sages to their sons or to students resemble a kind of philosophically-oriented counsel. The object of these Egyptian instructions (sboyet)–which span over 25 centuries, from the 5th Dynasty in the third millenia B.C.E. to the Ptolemaic period–was to teach the student to conform to maat, a word usually translated as “justice” or “order.” Maat, like Sophia as world soul, was created before the world “at the beginning of time” and it was through her that creation came about. (Gerhard von Rad, Wisdom in Israel, 153 and note)

The ideal behavior of one who harmonizes with maat is patience, calm, and self-control. Passion, hot-headedness, and lack of discipline lead to ruin. The teachings admonish the student to “hear” or obey–to not only memorize these rules but to put them in practice. Wisdom here is not mystical or abstract but of the utmost practical concern: attention to character and self-discipline must be applied to daily life in order to mold the character to adjust to this natural order. Successful application lessened the blows of fate and led to happiness and well-being.

In Mesopotamia, a collection of Sumerian sayings was discovered, called the “Instructions of Suruppak”–believed to be older than 2500 years before the Common Era. Similar in style is the “Counsels of Wisdom” which teaches proper speech and the avoidance of bad companions. “The Dialogue about Human Misery” (also called “The Babylonian Theodicy”) records a conversation between a suffering man and his sympathetic friend. The man asks questions such as: Why does crime pay? Why should the firstborn be favored ahead of later children? Why do the gods not help orphans? (Raymond E. Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmeyer, and Roland E. Murphy, The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, 2nd edition, s.v. “Introduction to Wisdom Literature”, 451)

Philosophy today is often perceived as irrelevant sword play with words, an exercise in futility in which any position can be set up only to be defeated or polarized with a counter position. The ridicule to which philosophy is subjected can be seen in a cartoon in which a character says “My brother is a philosopher.” The other character says, “My brother doesn’t do anything either.” Although academic philosophers today deal with abstract and subtle issues that may bear little significance for everyday life, there is a rich tradition of philosophical thought that has directly addressed the question, “How should we live?”

In the early history of Western Philosophy, various schools developed theories, techniques, and visions of cosmic order, which addressed the problem of life and humanity’s relation to the world, establishing communities to manifest their ideals in practical life. Before the beginning of formal philosophy, which began with Pythagoras in the sixth century B.C.E., the Greeks had a wisdom literature of their own. Traditional morality was put into poetic form in maxims by Hesiod in the eighth century B.C.E. and by Theognis in the sixth century B.C.E. Pythagoras envisioned philosophy as the true guide for the problem of living.

Pythagoreans sought to actualize a life of integrity and harmony with the cosmos through purification techniques, mathematics, music, and harmony. Pythagorean liberation from the “hard and deeply-grievous circle” of incarnations “is obtained not through religious rite, but through philosophy, the contemplation of first principles. Hence, philosophia is a form of purification, a way to immortality.” Unlike the Eleusinian and Orphic Mysteries based on revelation or a religious way of life, “Pythagoras offered a way of life based on philosophy.” (David Fideler, “Introduction,” in K. S. Guthrie, The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library, 31)

The Sophists carried on the tradition by teaching young men the art of rhetoric, with a goal of worldly success. As we know from Plato, their tendency towards cynicism and relativism precipitated a crisis in early Greece: anyone could learn to argue any position and if he were skilled enough could win, even if winning led to injustice and a mockery of truth and the well-being of the community.

It was Socrates (c. 470-399 B.C.E.) who both embodied and expressed the Greek inheritance of wisdom. He insisted that virtue and knowledge were one, and that if man failed to live wisely, it was through ignorance of what virtue really was. It was his method of inquiry that shook up Athens; the reverberations are still felt to this day through the legacy of the Western philosophical tradition. He called himself Athens’ gadfly. He would poke and prod and irritate, asking his questions in the marketplace, wherever people gather, asking them what really is virtue, the purpose of life, education, or whatever. When I read Plato’s many accounts of his beloved teacher, I get the feeling that words like death, virtue, learning, justice, etc. that people carry around are like heavy stones. Stones that are used to throw, kill, murder, and imprison. Socrates seemed to have no apparent agenda other than really penetrating into what these word rocks really meant. Through devoted interested inquiry, he persisted through the person’s resistance and annoyance, unraveling band after band after band of words that had coagulated into these hard rocks. There seems to me to be no further agenda, although Western philosophy has developed its rigorous logic from his method. His inquiry has the effect of stopping ongoing discourse that perpetuates the hardness and destructive capacity of these word-rocks.

Through inquiry, unbinding happens, which has the effect of circulating oxygen and light. That is all. But that is everything. Plato went on to build his theoretical system, but Socrates, simply through questioning, unraveled the bindings that strangle life and close off the possibility of authentic communication. What stands out in his method is that he truly does not know. He seems to hold onto this position and we get the feeling, dim at first, and then gradually growing over time, that this not-knowing is the secret of our freedom. There was an oracle that said of Socrates, “No one is wiser.” (Note: A classical scholar brought to my attention that the oracle has been passed down in error to read: “Socrates is the wisest man.” The two statements, of course, are not identical). Socrates himself reveals the secret: the only real knowledge he possesses is knowledge that he in fact does not know. What appears to our modern sensibility as whimsical, conceals a mighty weapon against fear and ignorance. It does not mean (as so many philosophy texts claim) that there is always more to learn about all subjects. It means to hold onto a position of tentativeness concerning everything. An example in the Apology is Socrates’ stance towards death. Almost all humans fear death. Why? asks Socrates. We do not know for sure what will happen: it might be bad, but then it might be wonderful. It may be a cessation of consciousness; but then, why worry for we won’t know what’s happening. If it’s like this life, Socrates says, “I will go on philosophizing with the great minds that have gone before me.” This state of tentativeness “stays behind” or balks like a mule at going forward–over the cliff of the literal. In other words, our fear coagulates and makes of death something literal–a hard thing, as though it were real. Then we language it and relate to it as though it were true in the way it our fear made it to be. Death becomes a finality, something permanent, an end with no outlet. To hold everything in doubt except the doubt is to disengage from the mind’s habitual tendency to reify–to make stones out of words.

 Lady Wisdom in Religion: Wisdom Literature

Sophia is a Greek word of feminine gender meaning wisdom. Sophia as the female personification of divine wisdom was the product of Greek-speaking Judaism; in Hebrew, the equivalent term is hokhmah. The body of literature in which wisdom “speaks” is called the wisdom literature. Five books are usually classified as “wisdom literature”: Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), and Wisdom. The most enigmatic biblical passages that describe Wisdom as a divine female are in Proverbs (see “Sophia Speaks”). Most of these texts were written and edited in the postexilic period, from 500 B.C.E. on. Wisdom speaks to man (only men) about the folly of seeking gold instead of clear perception. “She” addresses men at the city gate and at the marketplace, which indicates one of the “homes” of wisdom: the everyday affairs of business transactions and politics. Wisdom is concerned with discovery of the good life and the proper relation to God. The verses in which the female Wisdom speaks are vivid and passionate outpourings of love that invite the listener to seek her and love her. They articulate with intensity and devotion a wisdom defined as clear perception and suggest that wisdom is the supreme value of life and the antidote to materialism and greed. Wisdom refers to both style and content. The content “can be summed up in one word: life.” (Raymond E. Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmeyer, and Roland E. Murphy, The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, 2nd edition, s.v. “Introduction to Wisdom Literature”)

Most of the Western World is either Christian, Jewish, or Moslem. Whether or not a Westerner goes to church or temple or professes belief is not essential to be influenced by them: our interpretation of reality and humanity have been thoroughly conditioned by these religious traditions. The foundation of each one is based upon some version of the Bible. Each is based upon an interpretation of the one male god, Yahweh. Very few people brought up in the doctrines of their religion are aware that tucked inside the passages of their most holy Book are numerous references to a divine feminine being, God’s “playmate” and “master craftswoman” who was the architect of the universe. Sophia is the third most commonly mentioned divine name in the Bible, but few have heard of her position next to God and her divine stature.

It is not clear why this powerful figure faded away from theology and further articulation and development. A convergence of factors occurring during the rise of Christianity coincided with her disappearance. Among them was Philo’s subsuming her identity under the masculine term logos. Another was the institution of regulations and prohibitions against the discussion of wisdom on the “filthy” streets, following the invasion of Palestine in the second century of the Common Era.

Whatever events in history or scholarship were responsible for her disappearance, one psychological fact dominates the horizon of her departure. It is evident from contemporary feminist and theological scholarship, that “she” was problematical for the male theologians of antiquity whose pronounced misogyny is clear from their writings. Perhaps the presence of a playful, joyful feminine being who was present with God at creation (Proverbs) triggered revulsion in the hearts of those males who vested themselves with authority to insure the absolute power of only one supreme “jealous and angry” male deity. Sophia was subsequently removed, excluded, and dismissed from mainstream theological discourse.

Although Sophia was eradicated from mainstream religious teaching, she did not disappear altogether. She personified the goal of the transformation process in alchemy and was the central figure in gnostic cosmologies. Excluded by conventional religion, banished by clerics who fashioned a male-only theology in their own image, Sophia reappeared in the underbelly of the very religions that exiled her. She is the figure who personifies the goal of union between the divine and the human for mystics and visionaries in the esoteric traditions of Islam, Judaism (as Shekinah, the presence of G-d in creation), and Christianity. In the back alleys of the world’s theologies, Sophia embraces and addresses the marginalized. She restores humanity to the grand theological schemes perpetrated by those who would use religion for power and control. She became the container for the hearts broken, beaten and burned upon the rack of demonic religion in the Inquisition, the witch burnings and heresy hunts, and every oppressive regime that denies dignity and freedom to the individual.

While thousands of years have passed in countless religious wars, each outdoing the other in savagery, Sophia, quietly and without notice, remained as the one central figure that unified these same religions–identical in gnostic Christianity, in the Jewish Qabala, and in Persian Sufism within Islam. How could such a fact go unnoticed by so many generations of Christians, Jews, and Moslems? It is as though an invisible barrier separates exoteric (conventional) religion with its dogma from the other world where the poetic, the symbolic, and the metaphorical inspire an individual, interior experience of the divine.

These two worlds–their lack of dialogue with each other within the history of Western civilization–form the model upon which I organize the Sophia material: the dragon being the symbol of the devouring negative quality of belief cut off from relatedness and compassion while Sophia personifies the spiritual imagination that calls to us to express more of our human possibilities of justice, truth, beauty, and integrity. What happened historically, repeats itself in countless ways during our life. Like Sophia we, too, are banished from the world when we become problematical to the groups we participate in. We suffer exile when we question authority and when we go our own way contrary to the status quo. We suffer exile when we suffer from some private terror or anguish which the world dismisses as irrelevant. We suffer exile when we are the wrong color in a racist society; when we are the wrong gender in a male-dominated profession; when we are attracted to the same sex; when we are handicapped, too fat, too poor, too old, too uneducated, too dark, too Jewish, too Asian, too whatever it is that is perceived by the status quo as not quite measuring up. This invisible standard to which people are held in a society driven by inhuman goals (profit, consumerism, war, military defense rather than education, etc.) creates a social environment of psychological terror. When we become aware that we do not fit comfortably in the boxes made for us by society, we become aware of two worlds. This feeling of two worlds is experienced as terrifying by some. The face of exclusion from the comfort of human community is Sophia’s dark faces: Lilith and Hecate, goddess of trash and crossroads, guardian of the marginalized. Sophia’s path is one of inclusion that humanizes what has become rigid and dead, and in so doing, re-connects the two worlds severed by unrelatedness.

–Kathleen Damiani, PhD