One of my favourite things is discovering ways in which the wisdom in the Bible intersects with wisdom found within culture.

Scripture often borrows and reinterprets from the culture surrounding it

The authors of scripture did not seem to be anxious about being the original source for all of their material. Part of the divinely-inspired way that the Hebrew Bible is constructed seems to be learning from other traditions and taking and adapting wisdom even from places like Babylon and Egypt. This is especially prominent in books like Proverbs, sections of which bear striking resemblance to texts discovered in archaeological finds from all across the ancient Near East.

Wisdom is everywhere

In Proverbs, wisdom herself is imagined as the means by which God created:

By wisdom the LORD laid the earth’s foundations, by understanding he set the heavens in place;

• Proverbs 3:19

We should expect to discover Wisdom’s truth, things that we may have learned from scripture, appearing in all sorts of surprising places. 

All truth is Gods Truth

As Saint Augustine is famously paraphrased; “all truth is God’s truth” In On Christian Doctrine II.18 “No Help is to Be Despised, Even Though It Come from a Profane Source” Augustine rightly says:

We ought not to refuse to learn letters because they say that Mercury discovered them; nor because they have dedicated temples to Justice and Virtue […] ought we on that account to forsake justice and virtue. Nay, but let every good and true Christian understand that wherever truth may be found, it belongs to his Master;

• St. Augustine of Hippo - On Christian Doctrine II Chapter 18

King Josiah’s downfall

He would not listen to what Necho had said at God’s command but went to fight him on the plain of Megiddo.
Archers shot King Josiah, and he told his officers, “Take me away; I am badly wounded.” So they took him out of his chariot, put him in his other chariot and brought him to Jerusalem, where he died.

• 2 Chronicles 35: 22-24

King Josiah’s downfall came from not hearing wisdom from a voice that he could be forgiven for being suspicious of. Yet, the words of god were found in the mouth of an Egyptian Pharaoh. In the text, he ignores it, and ultimately it leads to his downfall. I don’t want to make the same mistake.