cf. Pro 23:3 and Pro 23:6, Pro 23:10 and Pro 22:28; Pro 23:17. and Pro 24:13., Pro 22:23 and Pro 23:11, Pro 23:17 and Pro 24:1. That in such cases the one proverb is often the pattern of the other, is placed beyond a doubt by the relation of Pro 24:19 to Psa 37:1; cf. also Pro 24:20 with Psa 37:38. If here there are proverbs like those of Solomon in their expression, the presumption is that the priority belongs to the latter, as Pro 23:27 cf. Pro 22:14; Pro 24:5. cf. Pro 11:14; Pro 24:19. cf. Pro 13:9, in which latter case the justice of the presumption is palpable. Within the second appendix of “the Words of the Wise,” Pro 24:23., no repetitions are to be expected on account of its shortness; yet is Pro 24:23 repeated from the Solomonic Mashal Pro 28:21, and as Pro 24:33. are literally the same as Pro 6:10., the priority is presumably on the side of the author of 1:7-9:18, at least of the Mashal in the form in which he communicates it. The supplements chap. 30 and 31 afford nothing that is worth mention as bearing on our present inquiry,[1] and we may therefore now turn to the question, What insight into the origin of these proverbs and their collection do the observations made afford? From the numerous repetitions of proverbs and portions of proverbs of the first collection of the “Proverbs of Solomon” in the Hezekiah-collection, as well as from another reason stated at the end of the foregoing section of our inquiry, we conclude that the two collections were by different authors; in other words, that they had not both “the men of Hezekiah” for their authors. It is true that the repetitions in themselves do not prove anything against the oneness of their authorship for there are within the several collections, and even within chap. 1-9 (cf. Pro 6:20 with Pro 1:8; Pro 8:10.
- ↑ Quite the same phenomenon, Fleischer remarks, presents itself in the different collections of proverbs ascribed to the Caliph Ali, where frequently one and the same thought in one collection is repeated in manifold forms in a second, here in a shorter, there in a longer form. As a general principle this is to be borne in mind, that the East transmits unchanged, with scrupulous exactness, only religious writings regarded as holy and divine, and therefore these Proverbs have been transmitted unchanged only since they became a distinct part of the canon; before that time it happened to them, as to all in the East that is exposed to the arbitrariness of the changing spirit and the intercourse of life, that one and the same original text has been modified by one speaker and writer after another. Thus of the famous poetical works of the East, such e.g., as Firdusi's Schah-Nahem (Book of the Kings) and Sadi's Garden of Roses, not one MS copy agrees with another.
