Proverbs and Amenemope
A claim that is made is that a portion of the Biblical book of Proverbs is actually copied from an Egyptian source, Amenemope. According to Introduction to the Old Testament by Georg Fohrer, Abingdon Press, 1968, p. 321: As has long been recognized, the first subsidiary collection (22:17-23:11) is closely related to the Egyptian Instruction of Amen-em-opet, which probably dates between the tenth and sixth centuries BC. The introductory poem (22:17-21) and the ten themes discussed (22:22-23:11) follow--often word for word--their Egyptian source. Even the division of this source into thirty chapters ("houses") seems to have been borrowed by the Israelite redactor for the entire collection 22:17-24:22 (cf. 22:20, where the RSV correctly reads "thirty sayings" for the Hebrew "day before yesterday" or "adjutants"). Now, Benjamin Shaw, Associate Professor of Old Testament at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, has written a series of short b...