Blurb:

The genre of the book of Ruth has been much debated. Variously described


as a novel, novella, folktale, or short story, the book is often


connected to the Israelite “wisdom” tradition as an example of “narrative


wisdom.” Typically, scholars who make this connection suggest


that the book was written to affirm and demonstrate some of the ideals


of the book of Proverbs. Recently, I turned this idea on its head


by arguing that far from affirming these ideals, the book of Ruth can


instead be understood as an extended problematization of the limits of


“wisdom” as espoused in books such as Proverbs (Quick 2020). Rather


than Proverbs, therefore, the book of Ruth might in fact be closer to


two of the other so-called canonical texts of the biblical wisdom genre:


Qoheleth and Job, which also reflect on and complicate conventional


wisdom. In this chapter, I reflect upon these suggestions by further


developing the connections between Ruth and the wisdom tradition.


By focusing on the thematic and formal characteristics of wisdom


literature, I argue that Ruth can be understood as a wisdom text – but


one which destabilizes traditional wisdom tenets. And this is inherent


to the adoption of prose discourse in the book of Ruth, as a discursive


and aesthetic strategy for complicating wisdom conventions.