The lecture strives to proffer an introduction to the poetical and/or wisdom books of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible. Within the introduction, first of all the characteristics of Israelite poetry are being discussed, such as verse, strophe, stanza, metre, parallelism, chiasm, acrostics and the like. Ugaritic parallels are also made note of. In terms of wisdom literature the specific character of ancient Israelite and ancient near eastern lore are both being outlined and presented. Further topics to be discussed include: O’Connor’s constraints, Hebrew and Ugaritic poetry, wisdom schools in ancient Israel, wisdom influence in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, Egyptian and Mesopotamian wisdom texts.