The Proverbial Good Life
A ttalk based on the book of Proverbs
by Galen Goldsmith, MAR, Mphil

ON DEMAND AUDIO/VIDEO ACCESS
This is an audio/visual talk. 1 hr 54 min
On demand video access is good for 1 year.

Description: In the Ancient Near Eastern cultures of Egypt, Palestine and Mesopotamia an important young man like the crown prince was taught the value of spiritual and moral wisdom. Wisdom is a feminine noun in Hebrew, so it is always characterized as a woman. We see the part of Wisdom in creation clearly when she is like a winsome child playing at the feet of God, dancing and laughing (Prov 8). She rejoices because God has created a cosmos in which wisdom can delight. But to the natural man, wisdom can be counterintuitive. It means the constraint of the passions and restraint of speech and to do what is right for other people and the world unselfishly. Wisdom can only be understood through gradual character formation because the student needs to experience its rewards to understand its value. As the student avoids folly and chooses to be wise, an understanding of the deep things of God forms.

The first part of the class is devoted to the created order in which wisdom is founded, and considers the governing concept and purpose of Proverbs. We are working with Prov 1:1-7 and Chapter 8. The second part examines what the student needs to learn to be wise. For this education we explore passages from Proverbs 1-7. The adult addresses the youth, inculcating broad, simple values that apply to many situations. The teacher’s goal is to encourage a character that can fully flower as an adult and restrain impulses that can blight a young life.

Galen Goldsmith has a BA in Philosophy from Colorado College, MAR in Biblical Studies from Iliff School of Theology, and MPhil in Classical Hebrew Exegesis from Cambridge University in England. She is proficient in Hebrew and has studied Greek, Aramaic, Akkadian, and is learning to read Egyptian hieroglypics! She once read the entire Bible in its original languages. Between 2008 and 2017 she wrote explanations of why English translations differ on every verse of interest in the Old Testament and New Testament for the "Meaning and Manuscript" window of the free online bible study site, "Scriptural Tools for Every Person" (STEP) at https://stepbible.org/html/en-28.html STEP is produced and published by Tyndale House Library, Cambridge. After many years of preliminary work, Galen has been researching and writing a book about a biblical Hebrew topic full time since August of 2017 and is preparing the manuscript for peer review in 2021. For this project she was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Rothberg International School, Hebrew University of Jerusalem and lived in Jerusalem for a total of 16 months in 2014, 2018-19 and 2019-2020.

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