Wisdom literature is the a genre of literature common in the Ancient Near East. This genre is characterized by praise of God, often in poetic form, and by sayings of wisdom intended to teach about God and about virtue. A genre is any of the traditional divisions of art forms from a single field of activity into various kinds according to criteria particular to that form. ... Literature is literally an acquaintance with letters as in the first sense given in the Oxford English Dictionary (from the Latin littera meaning an individual written character (letter)). The term has, however, generally come to identify a collection of texts. ... Overview map of the Ancient Near East The term Ancient Near East or Ancient Orient encompasses the early civilizations predating Classical Antiquity in the region roughly corresponding to that described by the modern term Egypt, the Fertile Crescent, Anatolia), during the time roughly spanning the Bronze Age from the rise... This article focuses on the monotheistic concept of a singular God. ... Poetry (ancient Greek: poieo = create) is an art form in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional and semantic content. ... Wisdom is often meant as the ability and desire to make choices that can gain approval in a long-term examination by many people. ... Virtue (Greek αρετη; Latin virtus) is the habitual, well-established, readiness or diposition of mans powers directing them to some goodness of act. ...

The most famous examples of wisdom literature are found in the Bible. The following Biblical books are classified as wisdom literature: The Bible (From Greek βιβλιος biblios, meaning book, which in turn is derived from βυβλος—byblos meaning papyrus, from the ancient Phoenician city of Byblos which exported papyrus) is a word applied to sacred scriptures. ...

• Psalms
• Proverbs
• Ecclesiastes
• Song of Songs (also known as Song of Solomon)
• Wisdom (also known as Wisdom of Solomon)
• Sirach (also known as Ben Sira or Ecclesiasticus)

The first four of these books are considered canonical by Jews and Christians. The final two of these books are considered canonical by Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christians, but not by other Christians or by Jews. Psalms (Tehilim תהילים, in Hebrew) is a book of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, and of the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. ... The Book of Proverbs is a book of the Bibles Old Testament. ... Ecclesiastes, Kohelet in Hebrew, is a book of the Hebrew Bible, known to Jews as the Tanakh and to Christians as the Old Testament. ... Song of Solomon is also the title of a novel by Toni Morrison. ... Wisdom is one of the books of the Bible that is not a translation of a Hebrew original. ... The Wisdom of Ben Sirach, (or The Wisdom of Joshua Ben Sirach or merely Sirach), called Ecclesiasticus by Christians, is a book written circa 180 BCE in Hebrew. ... For a discussion of Jews as an ethnicity or ethnic group see the article on Jew. ... For other uses of the term Christian, see Christian (disambiguation). ... The Roman Catholic Church, most often spoken of simply as the Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with over one billion members. ... Eastern Orthodoxy - Wikipedia /**/ @import /skins/monobook/IE50Fixes. ...