This popular origin of some at least of the proverbs sufficiently accounts for their comparatively trite and commonplace character. They were not trite and commonplace to those who first used them, and successive generations loved them because of their antiquity (Job viii. 8-10). Even to us they are not so commonplace as the far less popular and piquant Egyptian proverbs,[1] though I confess that they will hardly compare with the relics of Indian gnomology,[2] still less with the singularly rich and pointed proverbs of the Chinese.[3] The practice of writing antithetic sentences on paper or silk to suspend in houses (contrast Deut. vi. 9) gave an edge to the shrewd earthly wisdom of the countrymen of Confucius. The Jewish intellect developed but slowly into the acuteness of the later periods which produced fables, proverbs, and riddles which can safely challenge comparison.[4]
- ↑ Comp. Renouf, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 75, 76, 100-103; Mahaffy, Prolegomena to Ancient History, pp. 273-291; Brugsch, Religion und Mythologie der alten Aegypter, p. 91; Records of the Past, viii. 157-160.
- ↑ Comp. Weber, Indische Literaturgeschichte, p. 227.
- ↑ See Scarborough, Collection of Chinese Proverbs (1875). The Chinese proverbs have no known authors.
- ↑ On the riddles referred to, see Wünsche, Die Räthselweisheit bei den Hebräern (1883). Comp. them with the later Arabic proverbs (see Hariri, and comp. Freytag, Proverbia arabica).
