Wisdom at the Interface between God and HumansAn International Conference on Divine-Human Dimensions of Wisdom in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient World
19. Januar 2023, von Dr. Marcel Krusche
Wisdom or knowledge has a striking role in the narratives about the Garden of Eden in Gen 2–3 and Ezek 28:11–19 – both in the synopsis of the two texts and in the context of the Hebrew Bible. Whereas in Gen 2–3 the primal humans first acquire knowledge by grasping the fruit from the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil" and are thereupon banished from the garden, in Ezek 28 the king of Tyre is endowed from the beginning with wisdom and beauty, both of which he loses because of his hubris. In both narratives, wisdom or knowledge is more than just a life-serving ability that can be acquired and learned by humans. Rather, by linking it to the mythical space of the Garden of Eden, it appears as a divine quality. Wisdom thus has superhuman dimensions and is located at the interface between God and humans. In Gen 2–3, humans become "like God" by attaining knowledge; in Ezek 28, the king endowed with wisdom is the exclusive human inhabitant of a mythical sphere. In both texts, wisdom or knowledge is an ambivalent quality insofar as it is related to the fall of the respective protagonists and their banishment from the garden.
The conference takes Gen 2–3 and Ezek 28:11–19 as a starting point for conceptions of wisdom and knowledge that crucially concern the divine-human relationship. However, it does not limit itself to these two texts, but places them in larger horizons of the Hebrew Bible, the ancient Near East and early Jewish literature. The aim is, on the one hand, to better understand the subject of wisdom or knowledge in Gen 2–3 and Ezek 28 and, on the other hand, to shed light on the superhuman and divine dimensions of wisdom and knowledge in the different textual areas and cultures.
The guiding questions of the conference can be summarized as follows:
- What makes wisdom and knowledge a divine or superhuman quality according to the view of the sources?
- How can humans attain and participate in divine wisdom?
- What effects and consequences do wisdom and knowledge have for humans?
- How and to what extent do wisdom and knowledge affect the relationship between God and humans?