The Other Epistemology
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. Proverbs 9:10 NASB
Wisdom/ understanding– The verse is so familiar that we fail to recognize it is not about our definitions of wisdom and understanding. In fact, we might go so far as to say that none of the ancient Hebrew Bible is about the way that we come to knowledge and understanding. Why is this so? Well, the Western world has inherited a Greek/Platonic view of how we know things (epistemology is the correct philosophical term). The assumptions behind this Greek way of knowing are radically different than the assumptions of the ancient Semitic worldview. But because we are generally unaware that there is any other way to know things than the one that we simply assume, we think that when the Bible uses words like “wisdom” and “understanding,” it means pretty much the same things that we mean by these words. We couldn’t be more mistaken.
Bear with me, please, this is important. Here’s an excellent summary of the assumptions behind the Greek/Western way of knowing:
“The ‘Platonic ideal’ in the history of philosophy is described by Isaiah Berlin: it posits:
‘that all genuine questions must have one true answer and one only, all the rest being necessarily errors; in the second place, that there must be a dependable path towards the discovery of these truths; in the third place, that the true answers, when found, must necessarily be compatible with one another and form a single whole, for one truth cannot be incompatible with another—that we knew a priori. This kind of omniscience was the solution to the cosmic jigsaw puzzle.’”[1]
But this isn’t the way Semitic epistemology works, and neither is it the way rabbinic epistemology works. What this means is that even if we grant that the ancient world thought differently, we can’t assume that the first century Jewish epistemology is like our way of thinking. Zornberg comments: “The notion that knowledge of reality is singular, absolute, static, and eternal is tested in these midrashic narratives of the foundational events in Jewish history. The midrashic versions convey a plural, contextual, constructed, and dynamic vision of reality.”[2]
What is the difference? First, notice that the epistemological assumptions of Proverbs are not theoretical. Knowing for the Hebrews is very, very practical. The “fear of the Lord” has to do with commandments, rituals, precepts, and practices. In other words, knowing is doing. So ḥokmâ (wisdom) and bînâ (understanding) are about insight and discernment for obedience, not fact-gathering. Nisbett makes the point in a contemporary study. In Eastern thought, the world is a dynamic interactive environment where the verbs were more important than the nouns. “The world is constantly changing and it is full of contradictions. . . . What seems to be true now may be the opposite of what it seems to be.”[3]
In eastern epistemology, “there is no necessary incompatibility between the belief that A is the case and the belief that not-A is the case. On the contrary, in the spirit of the Tao or yin-yang principle, A can actually imply that not-A is also the case, or at any rate soon will be the case . . . Events do not occur in isolation from other events, but are always embedded in a meaningful whole in which the elements are constantly changing and rearranging themselves.”[4]
Nisbett concludes with this telling remark:
“Christianity is the only religion that finds it necessary to have a theology specifying essential aspects of God and that this insistence on categorization and abstraction is traceable to the Greeks.”[5]
What does this mean for our study of Scripture? For one thing, it means that the apparent jumble, misappropriation and apparently fantastical interpretations of midrashic material, fundamental to the way Paul and other apostolic authors treat the Tanakh, is a product of an Eastern epistemology, not our Western view. As a result, things like the exodus, seminal to Jewish identity are subject to a different sort of inquiry.
“‘What really happened in Egypt?’ becomes a less important question than ‘How best to tell the story?’”[6]
Did you think you could read this verse in Proverbs as a straightforward declaration about knowledge and understanding? Think again, only this time, think like a Hebrew.
Topical Index: epistemology, knowledge, understanding, Proverbs 9:10
[1]Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus(Schocken Books, New York: 2001), pp. 4-5.
[3]Richard Nesbett, The Geography of Thought, p. 13.
[6]Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus(Schocken Books, New York: 2001), p. 5.
