Wittgenstein and the Old Testament

Abstract

I start this paper by giving a general account of Wittgenstein’s relationship to the Bible, especially to the Old Testament. I will then examine those passages in his work where he explicitly refers to the Old Testament. It will turn out that all these mentions relate to books of the so-called wisdom literature or to texts that are close to it. I will argue that Wittgenstein’s selection is not arbitrary but reflects his interest in wisdom—an interest that is, however, motivated by critique and reservation.

1. Introduction—Wittgenstein’s Acquaintance with the Bible

In this article I will address the topic of Wittgenstein’s relationship to the Old Testament. It will turn out that he only paid attention to certain parts of the Old Testament, so that the topic will narrow down in the course of the article. First of all, however, I would like to clarify how Wittgenstein became acquainted with the Bible. From this it is possible to draw conclusions as to which sources one should consult if one is interested in Wittgenstein’s engagement with the Old Testament.

There are various ways in which someone can acquire knowledge of the Bible; the most important are probably instruction, personal reading and Church attendance.

1.1. Religious Instruction

Early on, Wittgenstein “received formal religious instruction—a priest later to be a bishop and so presumably highly regarded in Viennese society was brought in to give it” (McGuinness 1988, p. 43), and at the k.k. Staats-Oberrealschule in Linz he was taught “Religionslehre” by Catholic priests (cf. McGuinness 1988, p. 51). Later it was no longer instruction in the narrower sense but conversations with Biblically literate friends and acquaintances, such as Paul Engelmann (see Somavilla 2006, in particular p. 245), Ludwig Hänsel1, Norman Malcolm (see Malcolm 1984, pp. 1–239), or Maurice O’Connor Drury (see Drury 1981a, 1981b), in the course of which he had the opportunity to expand his knowledge of the Bible.

1.2. Personal Reading

There is ample evidence that Wittgenstein read the Bible throughout his life (see, e.g., Bouwsma 1986, p. 56; McGuinness 1988, pp. 255, 260; McGuinness 2012, p. 475; Monk 1990, pp. 192, 318, 540–41; Redpath 1990, p. 43; Somavilla 2006, p. 34; see Schmezer 2013, pp. 106–7 for an overview)2. What is less clear is which versions of the Bible he read.

He did not know Hebrew—according to Norman Malcolm (Somavilla 2006, p. 156)—and there is no evidence that he knew Greek, but he had an excellent knowledge of Latin3, and the Vulgate was his favourite translation of the Bible (McGuinness 1988, p. 255). According to a statement to Paul Engelmann (Somavilla 2006, p. 156), Wittgenstein read the Vulgate for the first time in Olomouc, where he spent several months as a soldier during the First World War. He retained this preference also later on: At evening meetings at Engelmann’s house they often read the Bible, and Wittgenstein is said to have insisted on performing this in Latin (Somavilla 2006, p. 245). He also recommended that his friend Maurice O’Connor Drury read the New Testament in Latin (Drury 1981a, p. 105).

Wittgenstein knew at least one English translation which, on the basis of his specifications, can be identified as The Bible: An American Translation. He comments on it: “I dislike the translation of the N.T. (by a man E. J. Goodspeed) but the translation of the O.T. (by a group of people) makes a lot of things clearer to me & seems to me well worth reading” (Malcolm 1984, p. 39). The first edition was published in 1931, the Old Testament was translated by a group of scholars under the editorship of John Merlin Powis Smith and, according to the preface, took into account new philological, historical and archaeological knowledge.

As far as German Bible translations are concerned, there is much to suggest that he knew and read the Luther Bible (see Somavilla 2006, p. 245). He once expressed his disapproval of a Catholic translation of the Bible (Somavilla 2012, Heft 3, 29 July 1919)4, and his German references to the Bible do not match the Catholic version that was authoritative at the time5 but Luther’s translation6. Paul Engelmann once showed him the translation by Martin Buber. Engelmann and Wittgenstein shared fundamental objections to this translation, although Wittgenstein credited it with conveying the alien and archaic aspect of the original text better than other translations (see Somavilla 2006, p. 157).

Irrespective of the question of which translations of the Bible Wittgenstein read, the question also arises as to which parts of the Bible he read. This question will be central to the present article, but for the time being I would just like to state that Wittgenstein favoured the New Testament but also extensively read the Old Testament7 (see, e.g., McGuinness 2012, p. 475; Redpath 1990, p. 43—Wittgenstein suggested to his student Theodore Redpath that they read the Book of Job together).

1.3. Attending Mass

In his childhood, Wittgenstein did not attend Church services very regularly. As Brian McGuinness puts it: “[T]here was little church-going from the Alleegasse” (McGuinness 1988, p. 43).

His behaviour in this regard changed during the war, and he later commented on this: “When I was a prisoner of war in Italy, I was very glad when we were compelled to attend Mass” (Drury 1981b, p. 179). His friendship with the parish priest of Trattenbach, Alois Neururer, indicates that still he sometimes attended mass during his time as a primary school teacher (see Wittgenstein 1996, p. 92, note 133; in a letter he asked his sister Helene to make or buy an altar cloth for the altar in the church of Trattenbach).

Later, however, he no longer seems to have attended Church services regularly. In 1936, Wittgenstein attended a Church service with Drury, but this seems to have been an exception (Drury 1981b, p. 146). Redpath writes in his Student’s Memoir that he does not know whether Wittgenstein ever attended mass, and an episode he recounts speaks at least against Wittgenstein having been an avid mass-goer: Wittgenstein took Redpath to a church he liked, and they knelt down to pray in silence—on which Wittgenstein commented with: “That is what a church is for!” (Redpath 1990, p. 44).

Overall, personal reading and conversations with friends seem to have contributed much more to Wittgenstein’s knowledge of the Bible than attending mass. Moreover, since the Biblical passages I will be discussing play little role in the—both Catholic and Protestant—liturgy, the most important sources for investigations into Wittgenstein’s relationship to the Old Testament are his notes, the Bible itself and records of relevant conversations with acquaintances; there is rather no need to look for sources such as sermons, missals, or pericope books.

2. Wittgenstein’s Attitude Towards the Old Testament in General

It should be clear from what has been said so far that Wittgenstein probably knew the Bible, in particular the Old Testament, quite well. What was his attitude towards the Old Testament?8 He explicitly commented on his view of the Old Testament several times, for example, he once wrote:

The Old Testament seen as the body without its head; the New Testament: the head; the Epistles of the Apostles: the crown on the head.

When I think of the Jewish Bible, the Old Testament on its own, I feel like saying: the head is (still) missing from the body. These problems have not been solved. These hopes have not been fulfilled. But I do not necessarily have to think of a head as having a crown.

(Wittgenstein 1980a, p. 35e; BEE 162b,16v–17r)

Despite the qualifying last sentence regarding the Epistles, this quotation makes it clear that Wittgenstein regarded the Old Testament as being somewhat inferior or subordinate to the New Testament9. There are, however, also statements by Wittgenstein that at least allow for a more neutral reading, for example, when he said: “For me too the Old Testament is a collection of Hebrew folk-lore—yes, I would use that expression” (Drury 1981b, p. 116). Elsewhere, Wittgenstein admitted that the Old Testament captures something:

Wittgenstein’s ‘Hebraic’ conception of religion was, Drury suggested, based on the sense of awe, which one feels throughout the Bible. In illustration of this he quoted from Malachi: ‘But who may abide the day of his coming and who shall stand when he appeareth?’ (Mal. 3:2). This stopped Wittgenstein in his tracks: ‘I think you have just said something very important. Much more important than you realize.’

(Monk 1990, p. 540)

Wittgenstein probably thought that what Malachi here states about the people of Israel could also be said about human beings in general or about Wittgenstein himself: It is difficult to stand before God, one must be purified to endure the greatness of God (cf. Mal. 3:3). Why exactly Wittgenstein considered this statement to be so important, I cannot say; but at any rate, he at least concedes that the Old Testament has made an important point.

Even if Wittgenstein’s comments on the Old Testament tend to express reservations, it cannot be concluded from this that Wittgenstein had no interest in the Old Testament. Hänsel—who was very knowledgeable of the Old Testament—even gave an interpretation of one of Wittgenstein’s dreams, in which he interpreted numerous elements of the dream as images of the Old Testament (Aaron’s Rod, Ark of the Covenant; see Monk 1990, p. 199)10. If this interpretation is appropriate, this dream is a strong indication that Wittgenstein was quite moved by the Old Testament.11

In the following I will examine which passages of the Old Testament Wittgenstein himself explicitly mentions.

3. Wittgenstein’s References to Passages in the Old Testament

Hans Biesenbach lists 15 references to the Bible in Wittgenstein’s written work, 7 of which are references to the Old Testament (see Biesenbach 2011, pp. 34–40). I will add some references and some passages from conversations in which Wittgenstein refers to more or less specific passages from the Old Testament and reproduce these written and oral references in tabular form (

Table 1. Wittgenstein’s references to the Old Testament (1)–(11).

(1)	Genesis 2:19–20	So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air and brought them to the man to see what he would call them, and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all cattle and to the birds of the air and to every animal of the field […].13	“Adam benennt die Tiere — — —” (BEE 183,159) [Adam names the animals — — —]
(2)	Genesis 3		Wittgenstein refers to “the story of the Fall in Genesis”, (Drury 1981b, p. 122)
(3)	Genesis 3:12	The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate.”	Outside [Ely Cathedral] we looked at a carving over a Norman door, depicting the serpent tempting Eve. WITTGENSTEIN: “I can hear Adam saying ‘the woman Thou gavest me to be with gave me to eat’.” (Drury 1981b, p. 119)
(4)	Job 1:21	He said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”	”Der Herr hat’s gegeben, der Herr hat’s genommen.” (BEE 131,27)14 [The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away.]
(5)	Job 40:15     Job 41:1	Look at Behemoth,15 which I made just as I made you; it eats grass like an ox. Can you draw out Leviathan16 with a fishhook or press down its tongue with a cord?	“(Sowie man auf ein Wesen, das das Nilpferd & das Krokodil geschaffen hat, die Moralbegriffe nicht anwenden kann. Hiob.)” (BEE 136,47b) [(Just as one cannot apply moral concepts to a being that created the hippopotamus & the crocodile. Job.)]
(6)	Psalms 14:1 and Psalms 53:1	Fools say in their hearts, “There is no God.”17	“Er sprach in seinem Herzen zu sich.” (BEE 165,195) [He spoke to himself in his heart.]
(7)	Psalms 90:10	The days of our life are seventy years or perhaps eighty, if we are strong; even then their span is only toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.	“Unser Leben währet siebzig Jahre” (BEE 116,97)18 [Our life lasts seventy years]
(8)	Ecclesiastes/Kohelet 1:1 (and several other occurrences in Ecclesiastes)	Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.	“Vanitas vanitatum, et omnia vanitas.” (Drury 1981b, p. 142)19
(9)	Ecclesiastes 3:1-2	For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted	“Auch im Denken gibt es eine Zeit des Pflügens & eine Zeit der Ernte.” (BEE 118,87r) [In thought, also, there is a time of ploughing & a time of reaping.]
(10)	Ecclesiastes		“Isn’t it strange that such a book as ‘Ecclesiastes’ was included in the canon” (Drury 1981b, p. 158),
(11)	Song of Songs		“Er hat soviele Schillinge als das Hohe Lied Buchstaben hat.” (BEE 122,39r) [He has as many Shillings as the Song of Songs has letters.]

)12:

I give one more quotation here in which Wittgenstein talks to Drury about the Old and New Testaments and specific Biblical passages. Note that it is Drury who cites the Bible, Wittgenstein only comments on the topic. I am quoting this separately because it is quite long (

Table 2. Wittgenstein’s reference to the Old Testament (12).

(12)

[Drury:] 2 Kings 2:23–24       [Drury:] Luke 13:4

DRURY: “There are some passages in the Old Testament that I find very offensive. For instance, the story where some children mock Elisha for his baldness: ‘Go up, thou bald head.’ And God sends bears out of the forest to eat them.” WITTGENSTEIN: (very sternly) “You mustn’t pick and choose just what you want in that way.” DRURY: “But I have never been able to do anything else.”21 WITTGENSTEIN: “Just remember what the Old Testament meant to a man like Kierkegaard. After all, children have been killed by bears.” DRURY: “Yes, but we ought to think that such a tragedy is a direct punishment from God for a particular act of wickedness. In the New Testament we are told precisely the opposite—the men on whom the Tower of Siloam fell were not more wicked than anyone else.” WITTGENSTEIN: “That has nothing to do with what I am talking about. You don’t understand, you are quite out of your depth.” (Drury 1981b, p. 183)

)20:

Roughly speaking, the quotes are from the later 1930s and 1940s. I will not comment on or interpret all of them individually. In this article, I am more concerned with a commonality between certain of these quotations, i.e., the question of whether it is possible to say something about what kind of Old Testament texts Wittgenstein was interested in. I will, however, go into some of the quotations in more detail below.

The quotations (1)–(3) come from Genesis 2–3, i.e., the story of Adam and Eve. (4)–(11) refer to less prominent parts of the Bible and also to five different books of the Bible. Nevertheless, all these passages, (4)–(11) and the topic of (12) have something in common, namely that they belong to the so-called wisdom tradition. In Section 4, I will explain what the wisdom literature is; in Section 5, I will show that Wittgenstein’s quotes fall into this category.

4. The Wisdom Literature in the Old Testament

The so-called sapiential or wisdom tradition is not limited to the Old Testament but can be found in many places in the Ancient Near East. I will, however, limit my explanations to the occurrences in the Bible. The Biblical scholar J. L. Crenshaw characterises wisdom as “the reasoned search for specific ways to assure well-being and the implementation of those discoveries. Wisdom addresses natural, human, and theological dimensions of reality, and constitutes an attitude toward life, a living tradition, and a literary corpus” (Crenshaw 1998, p. 15)22. Within the Bible, this literary corpus includes the books of Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes (Kohelet), Sirach, the Book of Wisdom (The Wisdom of Solomon) and certain Psalms. In Christian Bibles (not in Jewish Bibles), the Book of Psalms and the Song of Songs are, as a whole, categorised as ‘Wisdom’. This is primarily a matter of categorising the parts of the Bible and says only little about the content of the books. Some psalms, however, also have a clearly sapiential content; they are called ‘wisdom psalms’. The Song of Songs is classified by many scholars as sapiential because, according to these scholars, it has a sapiential editor (for an overview of the discussion, see Schellenberg 201623).

Within the wisdom tradition, a distinction is usually made between traditional and critical wisdom. Traditional wisdom holds that human beings are able to recognise fundamental principles for life. Critical wisdom is more sceptical when it comes to the capacity of human knowledge24; it considers people’s ability to control and understand life to be more limited. An essential feature of traditional wisdom is the assumption of a deed–consequence relation (Tun-Ergehen-Zusammenhang)25: good behaviour causes well-being, bad behaviour leads to suffering. An example of this is from the Book of Proverbs: “A generous person will be enriched, and one who gives water will get water.” (Prov. 11:25). This connection can be established by God (in which case, it is a matter of reward or punishment) but not necessarily so; some exegetes also think of the connection as a social one. Critical wisdom, however, questions this connection. Whether ‘critical wisdom’ involves an alternative or residual notion of wisdom is not relevant for the purposes of this paper; what is important is that critical wisdom opposes the certainties of traditional wisdom. (Many biblical scholars speak only of a crisis of wisdom rather than a critical wisdom). Large parts of the Book of Proverbs can be categorised as traditional wisdom; the Book of Job and the Book of Ecclesiastes articulate critical wisdom.

With these terminological and factual clarifications, I now turn back to Wittgenstein’s reading of the Old Testament.

5. Wittgenstein’s Selection Analysed

None of the texts to which Wittgenstein refers are a narrative of the history of the people of Israel (Pentateuch and Books of the Prophets). This can be explained quite simply by the fact—see Section 2—that he has a clearly Christian-eschatological perspective on the Bible as a whole: “When I think of […] the Old Testament on its own, I feel like saying: the head is (still) missing from the body. These problems have not been solved. These hopes have not been fulfilled” (Wittgenstein 1980a, p. 35e). Insofar as the Old Testament is only a prehistory of the New Testament, he is not interested in it.

The references to Ecclesiastes and Job—(4), (5), (8), (9), and (10)—clearly refer to (critical) wisdom, as these books as a whole belong to this tradition.

As already mentioned, also the Book of Psalms is included into the part of Christian Bibles often entitled ‘Wisdom’. However, the psalms quoted by Wittgenstein—(6) and (7)—are wisdom psalms in the narrower sense. In Psalm 14 (and the revised version, Psalm 53), wisdom and prophetic tradition overlap (see Brueggemann and Bellinger 2014, p. 80; Botha 2013). Psalm 53 “appears to be an explication of certain texts in Proverbs, as if applying the truths of wisdom teaching to the experiences of David” (Botha 2013, p. 583). Psalm 90 is a sapiential psalm and addresses human transience (see Müller 2013, 3.5.5; Forster 2000, pp. 137–99).

The mention of the Song of Songs (11) does not refer to any content, so no specific passage of the Song of Songs can be discussed, and it can only be stated, as above, that the book belongs to the wisdom part of Christian Bibles and is regarded by many exegetes as belonging to the wisdom tradition26.

Quotations (1)–(3) all refer to the same Biblical narrative: the story of Adam and Eve, the famous scenes in Paradise. Since this is a very common subject in art—at one point, Wittgenstein refers to a painting in a church—which is familiar to almost everyone (raised in the Western tradition), it can be argued that here Wittgenstein is not referring to the Bible in the narrower sense, not directly. One may then say that all the passages in which Wittgenstein refers directly to the Bible come from the wisdom literature. But one may even claim more: a closer look at the topics dealt with in Genesis 2–3 reveals that some elements give the impression of being sapiential: the knowledge of good and evil, the tree of life known from the Book of Proverbs, the reflection on human mortality, and the naming of the animals that reminds of ancient academic lists. And there are indeed some Biblical scholars—though a minority—who argue that Genesis 2–3 is also a wisdom text (see Schmid 2018, also for a survey of earlier texts that claim wisdom components in Genesis 2–3). If one shares the view of these Biblical scholars, one may conclude that Wittgenstein’s quotations from the Old Testament in fact refer exclusively to books from the wisdom literature.

In (12), Wittgenstein himself does not quote from the Bible, only Drury does so. But what the two of them are discussing is undoubtedly a wisdom topic, namely the deed–consequence relation. When Drury mentions the “punishment from God for a particular act of wickedness”, this is clearly an instance of a (certain kind of) deed–consequence relation.

The first finding of my paper, thus, is that all of Wittgenstein’s references to texts from the Old Testament are references to passages that may be argued to be sapiential.

Having established this fact, the question obviously arises as to whether Wittgenstein was generally interested in wisdom also in other contexts.

6. Wittgenstein on Wisdom

A list of some of the passages in which Wittgenstein writes about wisdom immediately demonstrates that Wittgenstein was engaged with this topic:

Wisdom is cold and to that extent stupid. (Faith on the hand is a passion.) It might also be said: Wisdom merely conceals life from you.

(Wisdom is like cold grey ash, covering up the glowing embers.)

(Wittgenstein 1980a, p. 56e; BEE 134,9)

Amongst other things Christianity says, I believe, that sound doctrines are all useless.

That you have to change your life. (Or the direction of your life.)

That all wisdom is cold; & that you can no more use it for setting your life to rights, than you can forge iron when it is cold. […]

Wisdom is passionless. By contrast Kierkegaard calls faith a passion.

(Wittgenstein 1980a, 53e; BEE 132,167–168)

Ich denke in jenem Zitat aus Spinoza an das Wort ‚Weisheit‘ welches mir ein im letzten Grunde hohles Ding zu sein schien (& scheint), hinter dem sich der eigentliche Mensch, wie er wirklich ist, versteckt. (Ich meine: vor sich selbst versteckt.)

[Concerning that quote from Spinoza I am thinking of the word ‘wisdom’ which to me seemed (& seems) to be an ultimately hollow thing behind which the actual man, as he really is, is hiding. (I mean: hiding from himself.)—my translation]

(Wittgenstein 1997, p. 52)

‘Wisdom is grey.’ Life on the other hand and religion are full of colour.

(Wittgenstein 1980a, p. 62e; BEE 134,181)

What inclines even me to believe in Christ’s Resurrection? It is as though I play with the thought.—If he did not rise from the dead, then he decomposed in the grave like any other man. He is dead and decomposed. In that case he is a teacher like any other and can no longer help; and once more we are orphaned and alone. So we have to content ourselves with wisdom and speculation. We are in a sort of hell where we can do nothing but dream, roofed in, as it were, and cut off from heaven. But if I am to be REALLY saved,—what I need is certainty—not wisdom, dreams of speculation—and this certainty is faith.

(Wittgenstein 1980a, p. 33e; BEE 120,54r–55r)

The tenor here is clear: wisdom is cold, boring and colourless, whereas faith is hot and passionate. Wittgenstein also uses the concept of wisdom differently (see Hosseini 2007, pp. 24–44)27, but what is interesting for me here are those passages in which Wittgenstein expresses reservations about this kind of wisdom, about teachings that tell you how to lead your life or how the world is organised, about what is only read together but not felt (see Wittgenstein 1980b, p. 121), about prudence (see Wittgenstein 1997, pp. 64, 101), about knowledge that ‘leaves you cold’. Terms that Wittgenstein contrasts with ‘wisdom’ are faith, essential experience, feeling, warmth.28 This wisdom is what remains when the liveliness, the unpredictable, the passion (the fire) is subtracted and only the rules (the “cold grey ash”) are left.

The frequency with which Wittgenstein talks about wisdom thus clearly reveals an interest in it, be it a sceptical one.

7. A Deliberate Focus on the Wisdom Literature?

The first finding of this article was that all of Wittgenstein’s quotations from the Old Testament come from texts that belong to the wisdom tradition or at least have clear wisdom references and elements. The vast majority of them are even from texts that clearly count as the wisdom literature.

Since this is a significant observation, the question arises as to whether Wittgenstein somehow made this choice consciously. The fact that he was interested in wisdom in general, as we have seen in the previous section, can be seen as an indication that he was also interested in wisdom in the Old Testament, but of course this is not enough evidence to claim that he deliberately read the wisdom literature in the Bible. So, in the rest of this paper I will try to answer the following two questions: Could Wittgenstein have known that the genre of the “wisdom literature” exists? Did he specifically read the wisdom literature in the Old Testament out of a particular interest?

The answer to the first question is quite clear: yes. His friend Drury repeatedly passed on Biblical scholarly findings to him, e.g., about the authors of the letters in the New Testament (Drury 1981b, p. 158) or about later insertions in the Gospels (Drury 1981b, p. 177). Wittgenstein himself once asked Drury, “Isn’t it strange that such a book as ‘Ecclesiastes’ was included in the canon” (Drury 1981b, p. 158), thus referring—by using the term “canon”—to the composition and organisation of the Bible. Wittgenstein’s reaction to Drury in (12) also makes it clear that, in dealing with the Old Testament, Wittgenstein did not accept the arbitrary selection of text passages (“You mustn’t pick and choose just what you want in that way”); he therefore attached importance to the contexts within which the texts stand. Even if these indications are not convincing that Wittgenstein was aware of the existence of the ‘wisdom literature’, there is one passage—namely the sentences preceding the quotation from Ecclesiastes (8)—that dispels any doubts in this respect:

It seems to me that, in every culture, I come across a chapter headed ‘Wisdom.’ And then I know exactly what is going to follow: Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

(Drury 1981b, p. 142)29

The mention of a ‘chapter’ makes it evident that Wittgenstein was aware that ‘wisdom’ can mean a literary genre; the subsequent reference to Ecclesiastes makes it clear that he identified the Biblical wisdom texts as belonging to this genre.

The second question—whether Wittgenstein deliberately read the wisdom literature in the Old Testament out of a particular interest—can probably not be answered definitively; the following is thus more speculative. I will try to make at least plausible that there is indeed a connection between Wittgenstein’s remarks on wisdom and his references to the Old Testament.

Numerous mentions of wisdom—such as those listed in Section 6—show that Wittgenstein was engaged with the subject. Wittgenstein associates wisdom with teachings that can be followed, like a doctor’s prescriptions (BEE 132,167), attempts to put life in order (BEE 132,167), principles that govern the connection between one’s behaviour and one’s status (BEE 137,65a), doctrines (BEE 132,167–168) and speculations (BEE 120,55r). Thus, the concept of ‘wisdom’ that Wittgenstein uses here30 is very similar to that of traditional wisdom in the Old Testament (compare Section 4)—think in particular of the deed–consequence relation. This understanding is also expressed in the direct references to texts from the Old Testament. For example, with Drury, he in (12) speaks of “direct punishment from God for a particular act of wickedness” and thus of a kind of deed–consequence relation.

In the above-mentioned passages where Wittgenstein speaks of wisdom, wisdom is not affirmed but rejected or at least mistrusted31. Wittgenstein’s references to the Old Testament reflect this critical attitude—which largely coincides with the view of critical wisdom in the Old Testament itself. Here are several examples32:

• Someone who, like Job, says “Der Herr hat’s gegeben, der Herr hat’s genommen” [The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away] expresses, according to Wittgenstein in (4), the same understanding of religion as someone who says that he knows that—even if he is doing well now—his fate can turn for the worse (see BEE 131,27). According to this understanding, humans cannot grasp the order of the world and use it to guide their lives, rather they are confronted with unpredictable fates that they must accept (as God-given).
• In (5), the subject of his reflection is actually not wisdom, nevertheless a certain view of wisdom, akin to critical wisdom, shines through. Wittgenstein here deals with certain questions about the application of concepts and draws a comparison with the God of the Book of Job, who makes it clear in his speeches (in Job 38–41) that he is above laws and principles—that he stands outside the deed–consequence relation—and that, as Wittgenstein says, “moral concepts cannot be applied to him” (BEE 136,47b; my translation). For humans, therefore, there are no insights into life-regulating principles on which they could rely.
• In (6), Wittgenstein uses the quotation from the Psalms to describe a situation in which an essential decision is to be made which cannot be subordinated to a theoretical rule: “‚Er sprach in seinem Herzen zu sich‘. Wenn ich einen Entschluß fasse spreche ich in meinem Herzen zu mir, aber nicht, z.B., wenn ich philosophiere.” (BEE 165,195) [‘He spoke to himself in his heart’. When I make a decision, I speak to myself in my heart, but not, for example, when I philosophise.’]. According to Wittgenstein, the expression ‘speaking in the heart’ is only used when something is at stake, not when one is theorising or speculating.
• When in (12) Drury comments on the killing of the children who mocked Elisha by saying “we ought to think that such a tragedy is a direct punishment from God for a particular act of wickedness”, then he claims to identify a deed–consequence relation at this point in the Old Testament. I understand Wittgenstein’s reaction to this (“That has nothing to do with what I am talking about”, as a follow up to “After all, children have been killed by bears”) as meaning that he thinks the story was not told to establish a connection like the deed–consequence relation but to cope with serious events in life (the fact that in the history of humankind, children have indeed been killed by bears). This is in line with the view that Genia Schönbaumsfeld33 attributes to Wittgenstein “that ‘objective’ or speculative thought (‘wisdom’) is incapable of solving ‘the problems of life’, because what is needed is something that ‘takes hold of you’.” (Schönbaumsfeld 2007, p. 31)34.

I hope that these examples have shown that it is not only—as shown in Section 5—books of a certain literary genre that Wittgenstein refers to when he quotes from the Old Testament but also motifs of wisdom. In these references, he articulates views that correspond to those of critical wisdom. His thoughts on wisdom in general (quoted in Section 6) reappear in his statements on the Old Testament, and therefore to me it seems quite plausible that he read the wisdom texts of the Old Testament specifically.

Before I summarise the results of this paper, I would like to add one more point: I think it deserves mentioning that there is a passage where Wittgenstein himself connects the topics of wisdom to the story of Adam and Eve in paradise, i.e., the Biblical passage that is the only one of his quotations from the Old Testament to come from a section of the Bible that is not usually included into the wisdom literature:

An exegesis of Christian teaching: Wake up completely! When you do that you recognize that you are no good & thus the joy you take in this world comes to an end. And it can’t come back either if you stay awake. But now you need salvation,—otherwise you are lost. But you must stay alive (and this world is dead to you) so you need a new light from elsewhere. In this light there can be no cleverness, wisdom; for to this world you are dead. (Since this world is the paradise in which, because of your sinfulness, you can’t go about anything, however.)

(Wittgenstein 2003, p. 241; BEE 183,232)

8. Summary

Section 1 and Section 2 of my paper deal with Wittgenstein’s relationship to the Bible, especially the Old Testament, from a general point of view. It becomes clear that Wittgenstein had extensive knowledge of the Bible, primarily through personal reading and conversations, and that he had reservations about the Old Testament, regarding it as being subordinate to the New Testament.

In Section 3, Section 4, Section 5, Section 6 and Section 7, I develop three main results, the third of which is rather a speculation. The first result (stated in Section 5, elaborated in Section 3, Section 4 and Section 5) simply consists of a subsumption: all of Wittgenstein’s quotations from the Old Testament come from texts that belong to the so-called wisdom literature or are at least close to it. ‘Wisdom’ here means “the reasoned search for specific ways to assure well-being” and “constitutes an attitude toward life, a living tradition, and a literary corpus” (Crenshaw 1998, p. 15; quoted more extensively in Section 4). The second result (like the third result stated in Section 7, elaborated in Section 6 and Section 7) is that Wittgenstein knew that the genre of the ‘wisdom literature’ exists. Although this second result is not a necessary presupposition for the third one, it does contribute to the plausibility of the latter: I am trying to show that Wittgenstein’s (sceptical) interest in wisdom has affinities with those passages in which he quotes the Old Testament, so that one may argue that Wittgenstein specifically read the wisdom literature in the Bible and that the fact that all the quotations come from this context is therefore no coincidence.