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Source: (consider it) Thread: The Book of Wisdom
Moo

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# 107

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My Bible study group is reading various books of the Apocrypha. We have read the first nine chapters of Wisdom. These chapters give the impression that God delegated many tasks to Wisdom. Today we got to Chapter 10, and it's hard to tell where Wisdom ends and God begins.

I would love to read a Jewish commentary on this. It's tempting to interpret it according to Christian theology, but this is not Christian writing.

I would welcome comments, and if anyone knows of a Jewish commentary, please let me know.

Moo

[ 11. October 2016, 23:51: Message edited by: Moo ]

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mark_in_manchester

not waving, but...
# 15978

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I wonder whether any RC shipmates will be along to comment, too. The RCs I know dip into these books as regularly as any other OT scriptures.

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(so good, I wanted to see it after my posts and not only after those of shipmate JBohn from whom I stole it)

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mousethief

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# 953

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Is this the same book as Sirach? I can't keep the books with more than one name straight.

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Sipech
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# 16870

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quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Is this the same book as Sirach? I can't keep the books with more than one name straight.

No. The link in the OP is to the Wisdom of Solomon.

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mousethief

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Thanks Sipech. Guess I should have clicked. [Hot and Hormonal]

It really does look from this chapter like Wisdom is being equated with Jehovah God. Those who seek a feminine face of God might do well to consider this pericope.

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Nick Tamen

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# 15164

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quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
It really does look from this chapter like Wisdom is being equated with Jehovah God. Those who seek a feminine face of God might do well to consider this pericope.

Indeed, many have.

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Nigel M
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# 11256

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Not a savvy reader of the Wisdom Book, nor up on Jewish commentaries pertaining thereto, but I did once come across an interesting book by a Jewish author on a wider topic: Alan F. Segal’s Two Powers in Heaven. Early Rabbinic Reports About Christianity and Gnosticism, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1977. I see that it was republished in 2012 by Baylor University Press.

Segal argues from analysis of a range of texts that belief in two powers in heaven was quite widespread in Judaism before the time of Jesus. Later it was condemned by Jewish Rabbis because the idea gelled too closely with the Christian veneration of Jesus.

The idea is there were two ways that many Jews used in expressing God’s presence and / or action. One was to refer to God himself, simply enough, as God (or Yahweh, etc.). The other was to use another figure, such as Angel of God, Logos, Glory, The Name, Image, and others, including Wisdom. The way the Jewish authors talked about it, it seemed as though these two were distinct, yet at the same time could be morphed effortlessly into one. There are examples in the Jewish scriptures that Rabbis picked up on, though often English translators cover up the incongruities because they feel that the Hebrew just can’t be right. Here are the unexpurgated versions:

quote:
Gen 19:24
Yahweh rained down upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from Yahweh from heaven.

Yahweh raining down things from Yahweh? Are there two Yahwehs or just one?

quote:
Amos 4:11, God speaking -
“I overthrew some of you the way God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah”

Effortless switch from first person to third.

quote:
Gen. 22:11-12
And the angel of Yahweh called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham! Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” And he said, “Do not stretch out your hand against the boy; do not do anything to him. For now I know that you are one who fears God, since you have not withheld your son, your only child, from me.”

“From me”? Abraham did not withhold his son from the Angel?

quote:
Exodus 3:1-4
Now Moses was shepherding the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert and came to the mountain of God, to Horeb. The angel of Yahweh appeared to him in a flame of fire from within a bush. He looked—and the bush was ablaze with fire, but it was not being consumed! So Moses thought, “I will turn aside to see this amazing sight. Why does the bush not burn up?” When Yahweh saw that he had turned aside to look, God called to him from within the bush...

Were both an Angel and God huddling together in that bush?

quote:
Ex. 23:20-21
“I am going to send an angel before you to protect you as you journey and to bring you into the place that I have prepared. Take heed because of him, and obey his voice; do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgressions, for my name is in him.

Name in an Angel. Perhaps people will be aware that “The Name” in Hebrew is often used as a circumlocution for God himself. It’s just another way – more circumspect perhaps – of saying “God”. So is the Angel here God himself, or another being?

quote:
Judges 2:1
And the angel of Yahweh went up from Gilgal to Bokim and said, “I brought you up from Egypt, and I brought you to the land that I had promised to your ancestors. I said, ‘I will never break my covenant with you.’”

Was it an Angel who brought Israel out of Egypt and established a covenant? Surely that was God?!

quote:
Gen. 48:14-16
Israel stretched out his right hand and put it on the head of Ephraim (now he was the younger), and his left hand on the head of Manasseh, crossing his hands, for Manasseh was the firstborn. And he blessed Joseph and said,
“The God before whom my fathers, Abraham and Isaac, walked,
The God who shepherded me all my life unto this day,
The angel who redeemed me from all evil,
may he bless the boys."

So in this blessing we have God, God, Angel... Was Israel just bored with the ‘G’ word? Why substitute it with ‘Angel’?


And so on. We even have questionable passages in the NT, such as John 1:18
quote:
No one has seen God at any time; the one and only, God, the one who is in the bosom of the Father—that one has made him known.
A Jewish writer familiar with the Shema would surely not have said there was a God in the bosom of God if the Shema was all about monotheism. Again, John seems to have picked up without batting an eyelid this strange (to our ears) idea of two powers in heaven.

The same thing applies to Wisdom. Genesis 1 and 2 make it clear that God created the universe, yet we have passages saying this other figure did it. We also have have God involving the divine council in the creation of humans (Gen. 1:26).

Thus there seems to be a divine plurality in the bible, of a sort. That, of course, sets a framework within which later questions could asked by Christians with a more Greek philosophical bent and from which the concept of the Trinity emerged.

The existence of this plurality has been developed in research since by quite a few scholars. Some draw a line between this ‘second’ Yahweh and Jesus. Possibly, but as Moo suggests, that’s just so Christian.

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Hedgehog

Ship's Shortstop
# 14125

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The concept that the Book of Wisdom is necessarily Jewish may not be as straightforward as it may seem. According to the Catholic Encylclopedia, there is likely no "Hebrew original" of the text and it was not originally written by Solomon. Rather, the CE conjectures a Jewish writer writing in Greek, which is to say by an Alexandrian Jew rather than a Palestinian one.

I find this intriguing because it strikes me that the concept of "Wisdom" (described as female) coming from Yahweh is not hideously far away from the Greek concept of Athena springing from the head of Zeus. And that leads me to speculate (with my usual lack of facts) whether the author did that deliberately and as poetic license to make the Book more palatable to a Greek audience--before warning against the dangers of such polytheism. From the CE:

quote:
His remarkably good Greek, his political allusions, the local colouring of details, his rebuke of distinctly Egyptian idolatry, etc., point to Alexandria, as to the great centre of mixed Jewish and heathen population, where the author felt called upon to address his eloquent warning against the splendid and debasing Polytheism and Epicurean indifference by which too many of his fellow Jews had been gradually and deeply influenced. And this inference from internal data is confirmed by the fact that the Book of Wisdom is found not in the Palestinian, but in the Alexandrian, Canon of the Old Testament. Had the work originated in Palestine, its powerful arraignment of idolatry and its exalted teaching concerning the future life would have naturally secured for it a placed within the Canon of the Jews of Palestine. But, as it was composed in Alexandria, its worth was fully appreciated and its sacred character recognized only by the fellow-countrymen of the author.


[Edited to delete a stray line that snuck by me!]

[ 12. October 2016, 18:34: Message edited by: Hedgehog ]

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mousethief

Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953

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Hedgehog, you say the book of wisdom is not necessarily Jewish because it may have been written in Greek by a Jew. Isn't being written by a Jew enough to make it Jewish, whatever language he out she may have used?

Nigel, "of the Lord" (of YHWH) is a biblical trope meaning "really big" and sometimes "of heavenly origin." Thus "the voice of the Lord" means thunder and "fire of the Lord" just means lightning. There is no theological import to these phrases unless the writer imports it (swidt) say by parallelism.

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Hedgehog

Ship's Shortstop
# 14125

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quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Hedgehog, you say the book of wisdom is not necessarily Jewish because it may have been written in Greek by a Jew. Isn't being written by a Jew enough to make it Jewish, whatever language he out she may have used?

Strictly speaking, I said it was not as straightforward as you might think, by which I meant that the Book of the Wisdom of Solomon might not have been written by Solomon. Or any Palestinian Jew, for that matter. Evidence suggests it was written by an Alexandrian Jew, apparently with special intent directed to the Jews of that city. To me, that isn't exactly straightforward. YMMV.

There is also the side question of when it was written. While the CE seems to plump for the 2nd or possibly 1st century BCE, apparently some attribute it to Philo, who died around 40 AD, which allows a potential for some Christian influence. But I'll agree that is a bit more of a stretch.

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"We must regain the conviction that we need one another, that we have a shared responsibility for others and the world, and that being good and decent are worth it."--Pope Francis, Laudato Si'

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mousethief

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quote:
Originally posted by Hedgehog:
Strictly speaking, I said it was not as straightforward as you might think,

Well, no, strictly speaking, you said the concept that it was "necessarily" Jewish was not straightforward as it seems.

quote:
by which I meant that the Book of the Wisdom of Solomon might not have been written by Solomon. Or any Palestinian Jew, for that matter.
Wow that's miles from what you said. I don't think anybody was ever under any delusion that it was written by Solomon. And the fact that it was written by an Alexandrian Jew and not a Palestinian Jew doesn't change its Jewishness at all, and it's not terribly surprising given that it's a post-Tenach book that shows up in a collection created in Alexandria.

quote:
To me, that isn't exactly straightforward. YMMV.
And if you had said that, I'd have had no quibble.

quote:
There is also the side question of when it was written. While the CE seems to plump for the 2nd or possibly 1st century BCE, apparently some attribute it to Philo, who died around 40 AD, which allows a potential for some Christian influence. But I'll agree that is a bit more of a stretch.
I don't know much about Philo's Christian influence. Is it widely held that he incorporated Christian ideas into his writings?

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Hedgehog

Ship's Shortstop
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quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Hedgehog:
Strictly speaking, I said it was not as straightforward as you might think,

Well, no, strictly speaking, you said the concept that it was "necessarily" Jewish was not straightforward as it seems.

Oh. Yeah, you are right. That was wrongly stated. It's weird, but in my mind, both when I wrote it and when I re-read it a couple of times, I was reading it as if I wrote "not necessarily straightforward"--but you are right. I actually wrote "necessarily Jewish." [Hot and Hormonal] I apologize. I was wronger than a wrong thing that was mistaken.
quote:
quote:
There is also the side question of when it was written. While the CE seems to plump for the 2nd or possibly 1st century BCE, apparently some attribute it to Philo, who died around 40 AD, which allows a potential for some Christian influence. But I'll agree that is a bit more of a stretch.
I don't know much about Philo's Christian influence. Is it widely held that he incorporated Christian ideas into his writings?
Frankly, I doubt the whole Philo theory, but I hate to give absolutes. From what I have heard of him, some early Christians were influenced by his thought--which is not the same as saying that he incorporated Christian ideas in his writings.

What I was thinking when discussing the dates was that we don't know exactly when Wisdom was written and, apparently, some have thought that it might have been written as late as the time of Christ (or possibly even post-crucifixion) if they thought that Philo could have done it. Ignoring Philo as such and just looking at the date of writing, if it is possible that it could have been written that late, then a possibility exists that some Christian thought might be reflected in it by whoever wrote it. Without knowing the actual author or knowing with more certainty the actual date of writing, that possibility cannot be absolutely excluded.

But, as I said, in my mind that seems like a real stretch. It seems far more probable to me that Wisdom was a pre-Christian writing and more likely to have influenced Christian thought than the other way around. Paul certainly seemed to be aware of it.

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Nigel M
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# 11256

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quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Nigel, "of the Lord" (of YHWH) is a biblical trope meaning "really big" and sometimes "of heavenly origin."

I see that with inanimate objects, but what do we do about the animate ones, like Angel or possibly even Wisdom? Should they be de-personalised? Or is the usage perhaps just another way of saying "God"? If the latter, there still seem to be some strange modes of expression in the bible that glide effortlessly from the circumlocution to the actual subject (e.g., from 'Angel...' to 'God').

It's as though the writers wanted to show that God appeared in visible form to humans and thought that the best way of doing that was to refer to something else first - say, Angel - then slip God in. Perhaps saying "God spoke to..." would have conjured up in the audience's mind a disembodied voice, whereas the writer wanted to emphasise a physical presence.

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mousethief

Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953

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quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Nigel, "of the Lord" (of YHWH) is a biblical trope meaning "really big" and sometimes "of heavenly origin."

I see that with inanimate objects, but what do we do about the animate ones, like Angel or possibly even Wisdom? Should they be de-personalised?
Well as far as the angel goes, it could just mean "the great angel". Meaning the most important one, one with the most authority, or something of the sort. Which needn't depersonalize. Although it's clear that when "the angel of the Lord" appears in the Hebrew Bible, very often it is speaking the mind of God in the first person. So there's more going on than just "the great angel."

Wisdom is trickier. Both here and in Proverbs it is hard to avoid the conclusion that it's God in other garb.

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mousethief

Ship's Thieving Rodent
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Hedgehog: not a problem. I was just confused, as you're not the type to try to weasel out of your words.

My knowledge of the Deuts is embarrassingly bad for someone whose Church accepts then as scripture. My default assumption tends to be that they were written about 200 years before Christ (or more) by Jewish persons. Anything beyond that I'm agnostic about, and I'm open to evidence of other theories because I'm just that kind of guy.

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