heroic men would have laboured in vain. Thus that friendly relation must have sprung up between the prophets and the 'wise men,' of which I have spoken already, and which reminds us of the sanction said to have been given to the Seven Sages of Greece by the oracle of Delphi.[1]
It is a misfortune that our sources for the history of Israelitish 'philosophy' are so scanty. Were there 'wise men' in N. Israel? and if so, have any of their proverbs come down to us, besides the mashalshāl -see next page] or fable of Jotham? Did they confine their activity to the capital city or cities, or did they also, like the 'scribes,' settle or itinerate in the provinces? (Matt. ix. 3, Targ. of Judg. v. 9.) Did their public instructions assume anything like the form of the proverbs of our anthologies? Did they teach without fee or reward?[2] At any rate, a post-Exile proverb-writer tells us with retrospective glance where the 'wise men' awaited their disciples—not in the quietude of the chamber, but either within the massive city-gates, or in the adjacent squares or 'broad places' on which the streets converged (i. 20, 21; comp. Job xxix. 7). No doubt they had a large stock of sayings in their memory, such as had been tested by the experience of past generations. Sometimes they would modify old proverbs, sometimes they would frame new ones, so that when their disciples gathered round them, they would 'bring out of their treasure things new and old.' From time to time they would commit their 'wisdom' to writing in a more perfect form, and such records must have formed the basis of the proverbial collections in the Old Testament.
- ↑ Curtius, History of Greece, ii. 52.
- ↑ Ewald infers from xvii. 16 that even in early times it was customary to fee the 'wise men' for their advice (comp. Saul and Samuel). At a later time Sirach says, 'Buy (instruction) for yourselves without money' (Ecclus. li. 25, but comp. 28). The Rabbis were not allowed to receive fees from their pupils. R. Zadok said, 'Make not (the Tora) a crown to glory in, nor an axe to live by' (Pirke Aboth, iv. 9). So the Moslem teachers at the great Cairo 'university' (el Azhar),
