The other extreme view requires some little explanation. Vatke does not deny that Solomon composed proverbs, but only that his proverbs can have resembled those in the canonical book. Putting aside some sayings of earlier date Vatke holds that the stamp of the post-Exile period (and more particularly of the fifth century) is as marked in the Book of Proverbs as it is, according to him, in that of Job; in short, that both works imply, equally with the still later Ecclesiastes, a long and earnest struggle between the principles represented respectively by the higher prophets and by the priests. The result of this struggle has become to the authors of these books an objective truth which it is henceforth their business to realise as true subjectively.[1] The existence of a free-minded school of thought in the post-Exile period is very plausibly defended both by Vatke and by Kuenen,[2] and if our only choice lay between the extreme alternatives mentioned above, we should be shut up to the acceptance of the latter.
I shall not however discuss here the post-Exile origin of the Book of Proverbs as a whole, but only that part of the hypothesis which relates to the very interesting section designated by Ewald the 'Praise of Wisdom.' If this portion is not of Exile or post-Exile origin, I do not see how it can be maintained that any other part of the book is so, except indeed the sayings of Agur and Lemuel (xxx. 1-xxii. 9).
The following are some of the leading arguments for the late origin of Prov. i.-ix. I. These chapters are said to contain a few parallels to passages in works belonging probably to the Exile or post-Exile period (II. Isaiah,[3] Job). I lay no stress on the occurrence of Prov. i. 16 (with the addition of 'innocent') in Isa. lix. 7a, because this verse is not in the rhythm of the rest of Prov. i.-ix., and is not found in the Septuagint. There may however be a parallelism between Prov. ii. 15 and Isa. lix. 8; the prophet is, at any rate, influenced by some proverbial work similar to Prov. i.-ix.
