The Bible book that tells you both to answer a fool and not to
Proverbs 26:4 advises against replying to a fool in the fool's own terms. The very next verse advises doing exactly that. Contradictions like this nearly got Proverbs dropped from the Hebrew Bible in the late first century, and they reveal what the book really is: an anthology stitched together from older anthologies.
Tradition credits King Solomon, but the headings themselves point to many hands. One block is labelled as proverbs copied by the officials of King Hezekiah, which would place its collection in the late 8th century BCE. Others are attributed to unnamed wise men, to someone called Agur, and to King Lemuel, whose mother supposedly taught him his lines. The opening nine chapters were probably written last, in the Persian or Hellenistic era, and the repeated phrase proverbs of Solomon seems to work as a category label rather than a claim of authorship.
Some of the material is not even Israelite in origin. A large portion of the section called the words of the wise reworks the Instruction of Amenemope, an Egyptian text from the second millennium BCE, perhaps via an Aramaic translation. Wisdom writing was common across the ancient Near East, and Proverbs shares plenty with examples found in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Its Hebrew name, mashal, covers far more than a snappy saying; only about half the book fits that description, the rest being longer poems, parental instructions and dramatic portraits of Wisdom and Folly as women.
Its outlook is strikingly worldly. The great events of Israel's story, such as the Exodus and Sinai, are almost absent, and instead of divine pronouncements the book appeals to observation and reason. Life follows rules: behave well and prosper, misbehave and disaster follows. Job and Ecclesiastes read almost like rebuttals of that tidy picture.
One idea proved explosive later. Chapter 8 portrays Wisdom as present with God before creation, and Christians came to identify that figure with Jesus. In the 4th century the Arians cited Proverbs 8:22 to argue the Son was created, while their opponents translated the key Hebrew word as begot. The winning side shaped the Nicene Creed's phrase begotten, not made.
Source: Book of Proverbs
