The collection of eighteen hymns known as the Psalter of Solomon dates from more than half a century before our era. No doubt the original was Hebrew, though they breathe a somewhat Hellenistic spirit. They express ardent Messianic aspirations, and a firm faith in the Resurrection, and in eternal rewards and punishments.
Different in character from the preceding works is The Book of Jubilees - so called from its chronological arrangement into Jubilee-periods' - or Little Genesis.' It is chiefly a kind of legendary supplement to the Book of Genesis, intended to explain some of its historic difficulties, and to fill up its historic lacunæ. It was probably written about the time of Christ - and this gives it a special interest - by a Palestinian, and in Hebrew, or rather Aramæan. But, like the rest of the Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphic literature which comes from Palestine, or was originally written in Hebrew, we posses it no longer in that language, but only in translation.
If from this brief review of Hellenist and Pseudepigraphic literature we turn to take a retrospect, we can scarcely fail to perceive, on the one hand, the development of the old, and on the other the preparation for the new - in other words, the grand expectancy awakened, and the grand preparation made. One step only remained to complete what Hellenism had already begun. That completion came through one who, although himself untouched by the Gospel, perhaps more than any other prepared alike his co-religionists the Jews, and his countrymen the Greeks, for the new teaching, which, indeed, was presented by many of its early advocates in the forms which they had learned from him. That man was Philo the Jew, of Alexandria. __________________________________________________________________
[135] Philo, de Vita Mos. ed. Mangey, ii. p. 140.
[136] All the Apocrypha were originally written in Greek, except 1 Macc., Judith, part of Baruch, probably Tobit, and, of course, the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach.'
[137] Comp. x. - xx.
[138] It is printed in Havercamp's edition of Josephus, vol. ii. pp. 497-520. The best edition is in Fritzsche, Libri Apocryphi Vet. Test. (Lips. 1871).
[139] Comp. for ex. Ecclus. xxiv. 6.
[140] ii. 39, 40.
[141] Comp. also Jos. Ag. Ap. ii. 34.
[142] Comp. 2 Macc. vi. 18 - vii. 41.
[143] Ewald (Gesch. d. Volkes Isr., vol. iv. pp. 626-632) has given a glowing sketch of it. Ewald rightly says that its Grecian elements have been exaggerated; but Bucher (Lehre vom Logos, pp. 59-62) utterly fails in denying their presence altogether.
[144] Ch. vii. 22-27.
[145] Compare especially ix. 1; xviii. 14-16, where the idea of sopha passes into that of the lgos. Of course the above remarks are not intended to depreciate the great value of this book, alike in itself, and in its practical teaching, in its clear enunciation of a retribution as awaiting man, and in its important bearing on the New Testament revelation of the lgos.
[146] Vv. 22-24.
[147] Vv. 25-29.
[148] In ch. viii. 7.
[149] In vv. 19, 20.
[150] ix. 15.
[151] Some Apocryphal books which have not been preserved to us are mentioned in Talmudical writings, among them one, The roll of the building of the Temple,' alas, lost to us! Comp. Hamburger, vol. ii. pp. 66-70.
[152] Sanh 100.
[153] Comp. Siegfried, Philo von Alex. pp. 275-299, who, however, perhaps overstates the matter.
[154] Comp. Siegfried, pp. 9-16; Hartmann, Enge Verb. d. A. Test. mit d. N., pp. 568-572.
[155] This is to be carefully distinguished from the typical interpretation and from the mystical - the type being prophetic, the mystery spiritually understood.
[156] Not to speak of such sounder interpretations as that of the brazen serpent (Wisd. xvi. 6, 7), and of the Fall (ii. 24), or of the view presented of the early history of the chosen race in ch. x., we may mention as instances of allegorical interpretation that of the manna (xvi. 26-28), and of the high-priestly dress (xviii. 24), to which, no doubt, others might be added. But I cannot find sufficient evidence of this allegorical method in the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach. The reasoning of Hartmann (u. s., pp. 542-547) seems to me greatly strained. Of the existence of allegorical interpretations in the Synoptic Gospels, or of any connection with Hellenism, such as Hartmann, Siegfried, and Loesner (Obs. ad. N.T. e Phil. Alex) put into them, I cannot, on examination, discover any evidence. Similarity of expressions, or even of thought, afford no evidence of inward connection. Of the Gospel by St. John we shall speak in the sequel. In the Pauline Epistles we find, as might be expected, some allegorical interpretations, chiefly in those to the Corinthians, perhaps owing to the connection of that church with Apollos. Comp here 1 Cor. ix. 9; x. 4 (Philo, Quod deter. potiori insid. 31); 2 Cor. iii. 16; Gal. iv. 21. Of the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Apocalypse we cannot here speak.