The Tree of Life

Description

Since 1990 Roland Murphy’s Tree of Life has been a standard introduction to the wisdom literature of the Bible. Now The Tree of Life is available in a third edition, complete with a new preface by the author and a special supplement that surveys the latest developments in wisdom research.

This superb study, The Tree of Life, thoroughly explores the wisdom writings of the Bible, interpreting this literature in a way that illumines the development of Israel’s search for wisdom throughout its tumultuous history. Murphy looks at each wisdom book individually Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, Ecclesiasticus, and Wisdom of Solomon and adds to them a discussion of wisdom from other parts of the Old Testament. His careful investigations expose the various guises that wisdom adopts the “fear of the Lord,” moral formation, the universality of human experience, the mysteries of creation, and others.