so the Israelites were able to run (piS) on that sea-bed.'
In many cases, however, the phrase employed shows clear signs of mistranslation, but restora- tion of the original is ditticult ; examples are 1'"'' ' thinking him a friend they melted,' where the sense requires something like 'they summoned him'; 7* 'I was reared in swaddling-clothes and cares'; 4"' 'for he will break them voiceless prone ' ; 5' ' we were filled {ivtTr\-qij0T]piev) with the jiaths of lawlessness and destruction'; 12-^" ' thinking gods the despicable even among the beasts of the enemies'; 18^ i^Xiov 5i djSXa/S^ 0i\o- Tip.ov ^ifirelas irapiax^^. These last words are in any case a paraphrase of Ex 13^^ 'and by night a pillar of fire to give light to them' ; but by what process this has become 'a harmless sun of ambitious peregi'ination,' which appears to be an absolutely meaningless combination of words, is exceedingly obscure.
The notion that Greek is the original language of the book is probablj' due to its containing para- graphs which, both in style and in content, bear little resemblance to the OT. Against this we must set the fact that it is replete with Hebraisms {e.f/. 9° 'lam thy slave and the son of thine handmaid,' v.* ' knowing what is pleasing in thine eyes, and straight [ii:''.i] in thy commandments,' v.'""" 'send her from the throne of thy glory' [lii33 kdd, Jer 14^'], v."° 'and she shall guard me in her glory' [apparently a confusion of n-nn, ' her chamber,' with m-in as in Sir 14-'']). It is'most improbable that so ambitious a stylist as the person responsible for the Greek of this book would have admitted these idioms had his hands been free ; but as a trans- lator he could avoid them only with the greatest difHeulty. Sometimes he takes the trouble, e.g. 5''"', where /ivela KaTokirrov ixopornxipov probably stands for Jeremiah's mna p'?'? noj (14*) or something equally simple.
The general elaboration of the Greek makes it probable that the translation is far from faithful ; and in a few cases references to Greek authors can be identified. In 18'* the Almighty Word which slew the first-born of the Egyptians is said to have ' touched heaven, while standing upon the earth,' Kal ovpavou fi^v TJTrrero, ^e^rjKei S'inl yijs ; the origin.al of the phrase seems to be found in 1 Ch 21", where the destroying angel ' stands between heaven and earth ' ; yet the Greek of Wisdom may be influ- enced by the description of Strife in //. iv. 443, oupavi^ iffTrjpL^e Kap-q^ Kal iirl x^ovl ^aivei. The frag- ment preserved in the Oral Tradition indicates that the original did not exhibit the phenomenon which characterizes the Greek — complete absence of proper names. Thus in the latter the patriarchs and others are designated by such epithets as ' the just one,' ' the servant of the Lord,' ' the refugee from his brother's wrath,' the nearest approach to a proper name being the Red Sea, and Pentapolis, used of the cities of the Plain. The proper names Noah, Moses, Jacob, etc., are usually supplied by the Syriac version, which is (at any rate in the main) made from the Greek. The most probable explanation of their omission in the latter is a stylistic objection to the use of barbarous words in a Hellenic text. Josephus resorts where possible to such expedients as substituting '.^gisthe' for ' Haggith,' 'Chalkeus' for 'Calcol,' in order to deal with this difficulty. Plato (Critias, 113a) explains how in his narrative Egyptians come to have Hellenic names ; Solon had translated them ! Even in the Iliad the Trojans with rare exceptions have Greek names owing to this sentiment.
3. Date and authorship. — The date of the Greek text can be fixed only by its relation to other books. There can be little doubt that it is quoted in the Pauline Epistles ; yet this would not neces-
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Bai'ily imply that it was earlier than I'hilo, to whose laiijj;Ha;^e ami even style it occasionally shows some resemblance. So late a date, however, seems to be excludeil by the fact that it a|i|)ears to have been \isecl by the LXX translator of Isaiah ; for the i-endering of Is 3'", 'say of the ri^'hteous that it is well,' by o^cw^ci' rbv diKaiov 6ti Svaxpv'^'^o^ ijuif eiTTiv, ' let us bind the righteous because he is disagreeable to us,' is most easily explained as a reminiscence of ^^'is 2'-, iveSpiOaut^ev rbv dUatov 6ti 50<rxp'i'''roi rjnTf ioTiv, since on the one hand the adjec- tive belongs to the choice vocabulary of the lalter rather than to that of the Greek Isaiah, and on the other the substitution of the 1st for the 2nd pei'son seems to require this explanation ; for if n^N had been merely misread ^•izi^i, the 2iid person would have been retained. The same acc(junt is probably to be given of LXX Is 44-° compared with Wis 1.')'", while in 11"= of the latter the substitution of ' a drop of morning dew" descending to the earth ' for 'a drop of a bucket' (Is 40") makes it im- probable that the Greek of Wisdom is borrowing from that of Isaiah. Since the LXX translation of Isaiah cannot well be later than 150 B.C., that of Wisdom should be somewhat earlier than that date.