Besides this, it seems surprisin" that an author of such marked ability should employ a jiscudonym,
• tvKivrrrov ^uToi', of which the original seems to be nK3 i"V ; Exodus liahha, 15, in a similar context, misread nyj. The Armenian has this right, phait gtgheUik.
688
WISDOM OF SOLOMON
WISDOM "OF SOLOMON
and in particular adopt the mask of Solomon, in whose mouth the lierce condemnation of idolatry is peculiarly inappropriate, whilst the attack on unlawful unions and their fruit is scarcely toler- able. On the other hand, it is undoubtedly true that the tone and style of many sections are sugijes- tive of a date many centuries later than Solomon ; side by side with passages which in sublimity are equal to the most striking parts of the prophecies and tlie Psalms, there are some which resemble the subtletiesof the Midrash and themeclianical rhetoric of Pliilo. There is, however, thegreatestdilliculty in assigning any date to matters which come in these categories. Thus with regard to the delini- tion of fear in 17", ' fear is nothing but the betrayal of the succours provided by the reasoning,' Good- rick (ad loc.) says: 'This sententious statement is probably direct from the lips of some Greek teacher in the schools of Alexandria.' He is, however, unable to quote any delinition by Greek philosophers which remotely resembles it, and no author can be charged with borrowing until his source has been indicated. The sentence which follows in the Greek is so mistranslated as to be unintelligible.
It would seem then that, without a longer specimen of the original than the fragment pre- served in the Midrash, location of the work is impossible.
4. Contents. — The work falls into three main divisions: (1) 1-6'^ addressed to rulers who are warned against tyranny on the gi"ound of future judgment ; this portion is entirely in verse of the Hebrew style ; (2) 6'^-8'-', definitions of Wisdom and a brief autobiography ; (3) 9-end, contain- ing the author's prayer to the Divine Being, into which homilies on the early biblical history are inserted. In the two last sections verse and prose are mixed.
In all three parts the author expresses some remarkable views. The first is noteworthy for the account of the conspiracy to kill the Just Man by a shameful death, whose resurrection, however, brings confusion on the conspirators, who are now convinced that His claim to be the Son of God was no idle boast. This passage (2'--5^) seems closely related to Is 53, while some of the traits resemble the description of the fate of the Just Man in Plato's Republic, bk. ii. ; it is, however, far nearer the Christian conception of the Passion than either of those passages, and appears to have been of great importance in the formation of that con- ception. When in Mt 27" those who watch the portents that arose at the Crucifixion infer that ' this was the Son of God,' Wis 5""^ would seem to furnish the argument.
In the second section the author gives an account of Wisdom so worded that the Greeks would with- out hesitation have identified her with their goddess Athene, who in the Homeric poems, as the early commentators observed, is the forethought, skill, and virtue of the characters. By entering from generation to generation into holy souls she repro- duces friends of God and prophets. His theory, then, of prophecy is that afterwards formulated by Maximus of Tyre (Dissert. 13), according to whom it is an intensified form of knowledge ; the person whose knowledge of the conditions is most thorough will best be able to foretell the result. Thus Wis- dom is ' a radiation of eternal light, a stainless mirror of the divine activity, and an image of His goodness' (7^"). His idea of this 'radiation' is materialistic ; it is a substance so fine as to be able to penetrate all other things, which it also excels in rapidity. In the long list of epithets whereby he endeavours to describe it (7°-'-''), it is probable that each was intended to convey some feature, but, if the passage be a translation, we cannot I
always be sure that the sense has been given faithfully.
In the third section the author applies his theory of Wisdom to the national records, and is doubtless to some extent a rationalist; if, e.g., Wisdom enabled Noah to save the human race from the Flood, the meaning is evidently that Noah possessed the knowledge which enabled him to foretell the catastrophe and devise means to escape it. And, indeed, wlien he asserts that Wisdom became a shade in the day and a star-fiame at night (10") and brought ' them' through the Red Sea (v.'*), he very probably implies .some Euhemeristic inter- pretation of the miracles. On the other hand, while apparently accepting the miraculous narra- tives, he endeavours to show the Divine wisdom which they involved. Comparison between the treatment meted out to the Canaanites and the Egyptians leads him to discuss pagan worships, which he attributes to intellectual feebleness ; the most excusable are to his mind the various forms of nature-worship, the least excusable the cult of clay images. To idolatry he attributes all the vices, and dwells especially on its connexion with sexual immorality and infanticide. The work ends with powerful descriptions of various scenes of the Exodus, wherein the appropriateness of the punishments is especially emphasized.