The Wisdom of Solomon or Book of Wisdom is a Jewish work composed in Alexandria (Egypt) around the 1st century CE, with the aim of bolstering the faith of the Jewish community in a hostile Greek world. It is one of the seven Sapiential or wisdom books included within the Septuagint, along with Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs (Song of Solomon), Job, and Sirach, and is included in the canon of Deuterocanonical books by the Roman Catholic Church and the anagignoskomenona (Gr. ????????????????, meaning "that which is to be read") of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
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Structure, genre and content
The structure can be divided into three sections:
- Book of Eschatology
- exhortation to justice
- speech of the impious, contrasts of the wicked and the just
- exhortation to wisdom
- Book of Wisdom
- Solomon's speech concerning wisdom, wealth, power and prayer
- Book of History
- introduction, followed by diptychs of plagues
- digression on God's power and mercy
- digression on false worship and further plagues
- recapitulation and concluding doxology.
The book is addressed to the rulers of the earth, urging them to love righteousness and seek wisdom; the wicked think that all is chance and that they should enjoy each day, but they are deluded. In the second section Solomon (not explicitly named, but strongly implied) tells of his search for wisdom.
The Wisdom of Solomon can be linked to several forms of ancient literature, both Jewish and non-Jewish, but it clearly belongs with biblical Wisdom books such as the Book of Job, one of only five such books among ancient Jewish literature. In terms of classical genre it has been identified as an encomium and with the Greek genre of the "exhortatory discourse", by which a teacher attempts to persuade others to a certain course of action.
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Canonicity
Melito of Sardis in the 2nd century AD, Augustine (c. 397 AD) and Pope Innocent I (405 AD) considered Wisdom of Solomon as part of the Old Testament. Athanasius writes that the book of Wisdom along other three deuterocanonical books, while not being part of the Canon, "were appointed by the Fathers to be read". Epiphanius of Salamis (c. 385 AD) mentions that the Wisdom of Solomon was of disputed canonicity. According to the monk Rufinus of Aquileia (c. 400 AD) the book of Solomon was not called a canonical but ecclesiastical book.
Council of Rome (382 AD) mentions the book of Solomon as a part of the Old Testament Canon. The Synod of Hippo (in 393), followed by the Councils of Carthage (in 397 and 419), the Council of Florence (in 1442) and finally the Council of Trent (in 1546) listed the book of Solomon as a canonical book.
Composition
The Wisdom of Solomon was written in Greek, in Alexandria (Egypt), in the late 1st century BCE to early 1st century CE; the author's prime literary source was the Septuagint, in particular the Wisdom literature and the Book of Isaiah, and he was familiar with late Jewish works as the Book of Enoch and with Greek philosophical literature. It is uncertain whether the book has a single author or comes from a school of writers, but recent scholarship has favoured regarding it as a unified work. In either case its blend of Greek and Jewish features suggests a learned Hellenistic background, and despite the address to the "rulers of the world" the actual audience was probably members of the author's own community who were tempted to give up their Jewishness in the face of the temptations of Greek culture and the hostile conditions facing Jews in the Greek world.
Themes
The book opens with the opposed pairs righteousness/unrighteousness and death/immortality: those who do not follow righteousness will fall into "senseless reasoning" and will not be open to wisdom; wisdom is not an inherent human quality nor one that can be taught, but comes from outside, and only to those who are prepared through righteousness. The suffering of the righteous will be rewarded with immortality, while the wicked will end miserably. The unrighteous are doomed because they do not know God's purpose, but the righteous will judge the unrighteous in God's presence. Lady Wisdom dominates the next section, in which Solomon speaks. She existed from the Creation, and God is her source and guide. She is to be loved and desired, and kings seek her: Solomon himself preferred Wisdom to wealth, health, and all other things. She in turn has always come to the aid of the righteous, from Adam to the Exodus. The final section takes up the theme of the rescue of the righteous, taking the Exodus as its focus: "You (God) have not neglected to help (your people the Jews) at all times and in all places." (Wisdom of Solomon, 19:22).
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