In the Assumption of Moses, a pure Pal. composi- tion, the OT conception of merit is still adhered to (12”), although in the Apoe. of Baruch, a com- posite book belonging to the first century of our era, justification by works is taught (517 67°) just as in the Talmud.
(3) If some of the Jewish-Alexandrian writings contain little that is noteworthy, from our present standpoint, regarding the doctrine of God, there are others which furnish us with much that is germane to our purpose. In the second section of Bar. (3° onwards) there occurs the following pas- sage: ‘This is our God, and there shall none other be accounted of in comparison of him. He hath found out all the way of knowledge, and hath given it unto Jacob his servant, and to Israel that is beloved of him. Afterward did she appear upon earth, and was conversant with men. ‘This is the book of the commandments of God, and the law that endureth for ever: all they that hold it fast are appointed to life; but such as leave it shall die’ (3-41), Owing to a misinterpretation, this was treated as a locus classicus in the Arian con- troversy ; the reference in 3°? is not to the incar- nation of the Logos, but to Wisdom personified, as in Sir 24". The really special feature of the pas- sage is ‘the view which it expresses of the sacred law. This wears the appearance of full creative originality. The Law is the final manifestation on earth of the wisdom of God Himself, which has taken a sort of bodily form, bestowing life and salvation on all who keer it. This constitutes a totally new combination of the older representa- tion of wisdom as the revelation of God in the world with the deep veneration for the law which had recently arisen.’* In Baruch there is there- fore no real development of the doctrine of God.
The Wisdom of Solomon, on the other hand, is here of first-rate importance. In this book we have the very highest conception of God, and are lifted entirely above the limitations of the Jewish idea. God ‘is manifested to them that do not dis- trust him’ (1*); ‘he visiteth his holy ones’ (415), Men please him, not by their Judaism but by the purity of their life. God is described both in His relation to the physical and moral worlds, and also in regard to His nature and essence. His all- powerful hand created the world out of formless matter (117); by His word He made all things,
* Ewald, HI v. p. 208.
DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINE
and by His wisdom He formed man (97). But while ‘ He created all things that they might have being’ (14), ‘God made not death’ (1%). As ‘sovereign Lord of all’ (6’), He exercises moral supervision over mankind in general: ‘being righteous thou rulest all things righteously ’ (12”). God’s infinite resources are used in behalf of the righteous and against the ungodly (5%27 1117), Stern, however, as are the writer’s delineations of the Divine judgments against sin, he is not ob- livious to the correlative truth of the Divine mercy (11% 12! ete.). The sovereign Lord is also the lover of men’s lives=souls (11°), and ‘the. saviour of all’ (16’). Full recognition is accorded to the truth of God’s gracious and sleepless providence (417 1218 145-3; 17), The philosophy of Israelitish history is explained by the fact that ‘by measure and number and weight thou didst order all things’ (11).
While the view of the Divine nature presented in Wisdom has manifestly much in common with that of the OT generally, it is also decidedly tinged with Hellenism. God is spoken of as ‘the first author of beauty’ (13°), a designation which would never have occurred to a Heb. mind uninfluenced by Gr. thought. All wisdom is in His hand (77%), and is the reflexion of His essential glory and goodness. In a noble locus classicus the author says: ‘She is a breath of the power of God, and a clear effluence of the glory of the Almighty ; there- fore can nothing defiled find entrance into her. For she is an effulgence from everlasting light, and an unspotted mirror of the working of God, and an image of His goodness. And she, being one, hath power to do all things; and remaining in herself, reneweth all things: and from generation to generation passing into holy souls she maketh men friends of God and prophets’ (7%). This is the language of the educated Greek as well as of the pious Jew. Such metaphysical abstractions and recondite conceptions are altogether alien to the genius of the unsophisticated Hebrew. What is distinctive in the idea of God presented here is that He is regarded not from the point of view of power and majesty, but from that of wisdom. The author’s philosophy led him to value wisdom more than power. With him wisdom is the most . excellent of all things, the noblest ideal that can be pursued, and the highest Being is necessarily the wisest Being. There is also something non- Hebraic about the following statements bearing on the spirituality and omnipresence of God :— ‘The spirit of the Lord hath filled the world’ (1”) ; ‘thine incorruptible spirit is in all things’ (12) ; ‘verily all men by nature were but vain who had no perception of God, and from the good things that are seen they gained not power to know him that is’ (13'). On account of Ex 3“ we should perhaps exempt the last from this category, but the other passages look very like Jewish modifications of Gr. thought. The idea of the all-pervasiveness of the Divine spirit occurs also in Ps 1398, but there is a difference in the mode of its presenta- tion. In Wisdom the personality of God is kept more in the background, and is conceived in a vein of idealistic pantheism. With Plato, God is not a person but the all-comprehending idea of the Good, and our author’s language seems to indicate a certain bias in this direction. But at the same time he emphasizes the spirituality of God ; in the passages referred to we certainly have this appre- hended in a very remarkable degree. If they lack the directness and finality of that great revealing word, ‘God is spirit’ (Jn 44), they nevertheless furnish an intermediate link between it and the more materialistic standpoint of the OT.