Wisdom literature

Jenkins comments a number of times on the prominence of Old Testament Wisdom literature and James in Southern Christianity. He notes that these books have been particularly important as inter-religious texts. The Galai Lama “provided an admiring introduction” for the letter of James, and Ecclesiastes has “acquired a significant following among those with a Theravada Buddhist background” in Thailand.

Jenkins muses on the irony that these “seemly prosaic” books should catch on in the South, rather than John’s gospel or the Sermon on the Mount, which Western missionaries thought would be appealing.