The subject of wisdom literature in the Bible has flourished in the last decades of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century. New material and approaches have helped bring some aspects into clearer focus, while others remain just as obscure as ever.

It was previously thought that the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls were uninterested in wisdom; with the fuller publication of more Qumran texts, however, they discovered that the opposite was true. In addition to copies of the biblical wisdom books and some Targums (Aramaic translations) of Job, wisdom texts from the Qumran Dead Sea scrolls also include: some sapiential psalms from Cave 11 (11Q5); parts of six copies of a large instruction known as "Sapiential Work A" (1Q26, 4Q415–418, 423); descriptions of a wicked woman the wise are to avoid and a woman the wise are to follow...