Ver. 1.0 — source text.

Ver. 2.1 — merging historical books into one file.

Second edition. Institute for Bible Translation. Stockholm. 1987. Proofreading: Igor Grushin

The Expository Bible

or a comment on all books

Holy Scripture

Old and New Testaments

A. P. Lopukhina.

Didactic books

TEACHING BOOKS

The third section of the Old Testament sacred books in the Greek-Slavonic Bible consists of "didactic" books, of which five – Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs are recognized as canonical, and two – the Wisdom of Solomon and the Wisdom of Jesus the son of Sirach [1] – are recognized as non-canonical. In contrast to this, in the Hebrew Bible, the last two, as well as all non-canonical ones in general, do not exist at all, while the first five do not bear the name of "teaching", do not form a special department, and together with the books: Ruth, Lamentations, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, the first and second Chronicles, are numbered among the so-called "ketubim", "hagiographers" – "holy writings". The name "ketubim", which became the technical designation of the third part of the Scriptures among the Talmudic rabbis, was replaced in antiquity by others indicating the didactic nature of the works included in it. Thus, in Josephus, the modern teaching books, except for Job, are known under the name of "other books containing hymns to God and rules of life for men" (Contra Apionem, I, 4); Philo calls them "hymns and other books by which knowledge and piety are built and perfected" (On the Contemplative Life), and the author of the 2nd Book of Maccabees calls them "τα τού Δαυίδ καί επιστολάς βασιλέων περί αναθηματων" — "the books of David and the letters of the kings about offerings" (II:13-15). The name "τά τού Δαυίδ" is identical with the Gospel name of the teaching books "Psalms" ("it behooves all those who are written in the law of Moses, and the prophets and the psalms about me, to die" Luke XXIV:44), and the latter, according to the testimony of Gefernik, also took place among the rabbis. Among the Fathers and Teachers of the Church, who, according to the LXX translation, separate the teaching books into a special section, they also do not bear the modern name, but are known under the name of "poetic." They are so called by Cyril of Jerusalem (4th catechetical sermon), Gregory the Theologian (Σύνταγμα. Ράλλη, IV, p. 363), Amphilochius of Iconium (ibid., p. 365), Bethany of Cyprus, and John of Damascus (Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, IV, 17). However, already Leontius of Byzantium (6th century) calls them "didactic" — "παραινετικά" (De Sectis, actio II, Migne 86 vol., p. 1204).