Literature. — Schtift, Apostolic Christianity/; McOiffert, His- tory of Chrintianity in the Apostolic Aiie ; Bartlet, The Apostolic Aqe ; Weizsacker, Apnatolic Age (Eiiu'- tr.), vol. ii. ; Harnack, liistory of Dofjma, vol. i. ; Hort, The Christmn Ecclesia ; Lechler, Apostolic and post. Apostolic Times ; Beyschkog, ■VT' Theolomi (Kng. tr.); Pfleiderer, rrchristcnthum ; Loening, Gemeiiiflecerfassitng des l/rohristcnthuins; also article Cuurch, i. The Public Worship, and books there named.
W. F. ADENKY. WOT.— See WiT.
WRATH See Angkb.
WRESTLING is Uvice referred to in EV of OT and once in NT. The Heb. terms are — 1. p3x (in Niph.),* of Jacob's wrestling at Peniel, Gn 32-^-^ (LXX TraXalu). On the word-play between ne'tbak and Jabhok see vol. ii. p. 530°, note t. 2. %p, in Kaeliel's saying : ' With mighty wrestlings (naph- ti'dim) have 1 -wrestled (niphtalti) with my sister and have prevailed,' whence she is said to have given to Bilhah's son tiie name Naphtali, Gn 30*. The word means ' twist oneself without being spe- cifically confined to wrestling.
Wrestling, which was a familiar spectacle at the games in any Greek city, supplies a metaphor to St. Paul in Eph 6" 'For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood,' etc. (Sn ovk Icmv rnjiiv [v.l. u/iii'] Ti Td\r) 7rp6s at/ua xoi aapxa, k.t.\.). For a description of wrestling contests see Smith's Diet, of Gr. and Bom. Ant., s.v. ' Lucta.'
WRITING.— i. The Antiquity of Writing. — The practice of writing in the countries of the nearer East goes back to a remote and indefinite antiquity. Looking only at the nations connected in some measure with Palestine, we find evidence of tlie use of \\Titten characters at a date far earlier than the beginnings of anything tliat can be called definite Hebrew history. In Egypt, in- scriptions have been found containing the name of Menes, the first king in tlie first dynasty known to subsequent ECTptian chroniclers, whose date cannot be much later (and may be earlier) th;in B.C. 5000, while other inscriptions are believed to belong to yet earlier rulers. Tliese are inscribed upon stone : the earliest extant e.\ample of writ- ing upon papyrus is one found at Sakkara in 1893, containing accounts dated in the reign of As.sa, the last king of theStli dynasty (c. 35SU-3530 B.C.). To the same date purports to belong the first recorded literary composition in Egypt, the Pro- verbs of Ptah - hotep, preserved in tlie Papyrus Prisse, though the papyrus itself is of a much later date (c. 2500 B.C.). In Babylonia, inscrijitions are extant of Sargonl., who flourished about B.C. 3750 ; while the thousands of tablets found at Telloh prove the free use of writing among the Sumerian
• This word may be a denom. from p^N ' dust/ and mean ' get dusty ' (cf. xiue, Mvfttt), or may be ft dialectical variant of p;g clasp,' * embrace.*
inhabitants of Babylonia at an even earlier date, wliich cannot be placed lower than B.C. 4000. From Palestine itself we liave no remains of so early a period; but the tablets of Tel el-Amarna (see I iii.) include several letters written by the governors of cities in Palestine to their masters in Egypt in the 15th cent. B.C. ; and recent excava- tions at Knossos in Crete liave brought to light a large quantity of inscribed tablets, partly hiero- glyphic, but mainly linear in script, in characters as yet undociphered, which must also be assigned to about the middle of the second millennium B.C. How far tliese are to be regarded as the ancestors of Greek writing is a point stiU undeter- mined ; but they complete the proof that in the countries surrounding Palestine, and probably also in Palestine itself, writing was an art well known and familiarly practised for many centuries before the earliest examples of Hebrew writing at present extant.
1;ITKR.\TURE. — Arts. Babvlonu, Eotpt, above; Petrie. Royai Toinbn of the First Dynasty at Abydos, 1900, Hist, of Egypt, L 81 ; L. \'V. King, Enci/c. Bibl. i. 439-442 ; A. J. Evans, Annual of the British iSchool at Athens, 1899-1000, pp. 65-63.
ii. Materials. — Many materials were used in Palestine and the adjoining countries for the reception of writing at various times, (a) Stone is almost everywliere the earliest material on which writing has come down to us. The earliest inscrip- tions in Egj'pt and Babylonia are on stone. Stone is also used for the Hittite inscriptions in northern Syria and Asia Minor ; and in Palestine itself the earliest considerable examples of ^vriting are the Moabite Stone and the Siloam inscription (see § iii.). The Hebrew books, moreover, mention the use of stone in the earliest periods of their history. The Law given to Moses on Mt. Sinai is said to have been written on 'tables of stone' (Ex 31" 3-l'-^). Moses commanded the people, when they passed over Jordan, to set up great stones, covered with plaster, and to WTite the Law upon them (Dt 27" ^ cf. Jos 8*"*^). Job desires that his words might be graven in the rock for ever with an iron pen and lead (Job 19-^). In Phoenicia and Greece, similarly, the earliest extant examples of writing are inscriptions upon stone. (6) Clay was nsed predominantly in Assyria and Babylonia, the records and literature of which countries have come down to us mainly in the form of tablets of clay, on which characters in cuneiform writing have been inscribed while it was soft (see Babylonia). The discovery at Tel el-Amama, in Upper E"ypt, of similar tablets, containing the correspondence of the governors of the Syrian provinces and others with their Egyptian masters (see § iii.), shows that this kind of writing was the normal form of otiicial correspondence between Egypt and Syria, at any rate in the time of the 18th dynasty (c. 1400 B.C.). Tlie Knossian tablets also are of sun-baked clay. In Ezk 4' the prophet, in captivity in Assyria, is directed to draw a plan of Jerusalem upon a tile (Heb. Ubhendh, LXX Tr\li/Bo^). (c) Wood was largely used in many countries, in the form of tablets. In Greece it appears to have been the principal material in use before the introduction of papyrus, and to have continued to be employed for special purposes long after that date. The earliest men- tion of writing in Greek literature (Homer, II. vL 109) describes a message written iv irivaKi irrvKrif. The laws of Solon were ^vritten upon wooden tablets (dtovcs and Kup^ea, Arist. Birds, 1354 ; Plut. Sol. 25). Tablets, whitewashed in order to receive ink better, were employed for official notices in Athens in the 4th cent. B.C. (ypan/iareta \(\evKu/Uya, TtfdKwy XeXevKwiUnv, Ar. 'A$. IIoX. 47, 48) ; a set of such tablets, used for private purposes at Panopolia in Upper Egypt about the 7th cent, after Christ, is now in the British Museum (Add, MS 33300).