Well, here we are, lesson one introducing the book of wisdom for this new Bible study, the wisdom of Solomon of Love Righteousness. This is going to be a four-part study, and you can see in the syllabus and suggested readings how we broke down those four lessons there and what the usual recommended commentaries are, these great trusted Catholic commentaries. There's a whole slew of different options there for you if you have the time and the ability to read through all those, but of course I always curate what I feel are the best, most interesting quotations here from these commentaries to put together this Bible study. So this first lesson is introducing the book, and then we're going to have three more lessons where we're going to divide out these 19 chapters according to the structure that most commentators, commentators and commentaries agree upon.
So with that then on part one in this in the notes here, what I'd like to do is just introduce the book of wisdom and then part two we're going to talk a little bit just briefly, ten minutes or so about the Deuterocanonicals because this is a Deuterocanonical book, and I have a lot more to say about that when we get there. So introducing this book first, how does the wisdom of Solomon this book coincide and fit within the larger context of the wisdom literature collection? We have many Bible studies of course on scripture and tradition.com, we talk a lot about Job and Psalms and the Solomonic trilogy with Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Solomon. Then we also have this book here.
So the book of wisdom is certainly going to be teaching a lot of the same things about these other books, especially Proverbs. So it's going to continue a lot of those themes, but this book is so interesting because it develops those themes a lot farther. Other books like Job and Ecclesiastes and even the Psalms ask huge questions about life and death and life after death and judgment. This book, more than any other literature, wisdom literature book is going to develop those themes and develop the doctrine that's going to come into the New Testament.
So of course it's going to rely a lot on historical books, the Pentateuch is going to talk a lot about the Exodus of course as we're going to see, but these big themes that other literature books, wisdom literature books introduce, immortality, life after death, the origin of sin, a judgment of the righteous and the unrighteous, all of that is going to be developed here. So it's a very, very special book in the whole wisdom literature collection. Now really quickly, excuse me, when we talk about wisdom, I've talked about this a lot in other Bible studies, so I won't develop it too much here, but wisdom in Hebrew is Hochaamah and in Greek it's Sophia, it's skill ability, it's insight, it's really seeing things as God sees them, it's seeing the proper end of the Telos T-E-L-O-S, Greek word there, the purpose, the goal of the thing, that's really what wisdom is here. So architect has wisdom, skill ability to see the proper end of whatever he's building, could be a chair, the proper end of a good chair is for somebody to sit on it, you can have skill and ability in building the tabernacle, which certainly was the case back in Exodus, then you have skill and ability to see the end of one's life, the moral life, righteousness and justice and virtue.
So wisdom kind of encompasses all of these things. All right, so wisdom develops these incredible themes, I'm really, really excited to talk about these particular themes, I'm going to introduce them when we get to the main themes and typology here towards the end of the lesson, but I'm really excited to dive deeper into these topics with you as we go through these chapters because it's incredibly amazing how developed the theology, the Old Testament theology is on these topics as it prepares for Jesus Christ. All right, now one more thing before we move on here is that, so how does the book of wisdom, the wisdom of Solomon fit into this genre? Well, I really like this particular quote from your Catholic and the Old Testament because it gives you a little bit more forest beyond the trees.
All right, a lot of people lose the forest for the trees as the Old San goes, they don't really understand the big picture, and when I taught the three different Bible studies and sequence of Solomon's trilogy, the Solomonic Trilogy as we call it, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Solomon, they're very different books for sure, like no doubt about it, but there very much is kind of a narrative story or at least a spiritual journey, a spiritual narrative of the progression of these three books. They're all very much related to each other as they're trying to understand wisdom applied in life, and then of course that comes into Christian tradition, understanding the three stages of the spiritual life. So they're very much as a flow between these three books and so check out those Bible studies for more on that. But this book here, and we'll talk about authorship soon, it's actually not written by Solomon, but this book continues that same kind of journey and inquiry into the big questions of life.
So here's a little quote from your Catholic introduction to the Old Testament, one of the great resources we always use. It says, the books of Proverbs through wisdom, so four books can be viewed as a kind of theological odyssey of the canonical Solomon. So first in Proverbs, he attains the wisdom that leads to temporal success. Second in Ecclesiastes, he despairs of temporal success because death renders at vain, right?
Vanity of entities, all his abandities, the classic line. Number three in the song, he discovers that love is stronger than death. Even here number four in wisdom, he falls in love with lady wisdom and so attained immortality. I really like that.
It's a great quote that you could begin to see the big picture, right? This book is not part of his trilogy, it's not written by Solomon, not even a little bit, as I'm going to explain here in just a little bit, but it's kind of the conclusion of his trilogy. The trilogy, beginning of Proverbs through Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon as it really parallels the three stages of the spiritual life, the purgative and the illuminative and the unit of way, it's really, really incredible to see how the questions posed in those books is going to now find, and now find answers for those questions. It then is going to really teed up nicely for the fullness of revelation in Jesus Christ and in New Testament.
So this is a very, very important book. It's very crucial actually in the whole corpus of wisdom literature. Sadly, of course, our dear Protestant brothers and sisters don't have this book, but there's really nothing in the book that they would disagree with. It's just a tragedy of the Protestant Reformation.
This is an incredible book that Protestants would absolutely love and hopefully they can prove that as we go through it. All right, so then let's move on now and look at some very introductory topics like we do for everybody. First title, I gave you a Greek title and a Latin title here in the notes, and you're going to notice the Greek commentaries. There's never any Hebrew title, which is kind of strange, right?
Because a lot of the most of the books of the Old Testament have Hebrew titles, but not this one. Why? Well, because it wasn't written in Hebrew. That's going to be the case and also it's not included in the Hebrew canon or the Jewish Old Testament, we don't call the Old Testament with the Jewish scriptures.
So you only have a Greek and a Latin title. The Greek is the original and I'll explain more in just a little bit, but Greek it's the wisdom of Solomon, Sophia, there's the classic word for wisdom, Sophia, Solomonus, so the wisdom of Solomon. If it comes into the Latin, the book of Sophia. Sometimes it's also called just wisdom.
So you'll hear it referred to or you'll read it in different commentaries or articles, blogs, whatever, those three titles. So it's the wisdom of Solomon, or it's the book of wisdom, or it's just simply wisdom. I'll probably call it just wisdom, just to save up the fraction of a second while I'm talking, but I probably call it the book of wisdom for sure. Most of the time we're just wisdom.
So no Hebrew title, because it wasn't written in Hebrew, and it's not included in the Jewish canon, and more to say in just a second. So those are the titles, and the authorship in the dating is really, really interesting here. So Solomon is mentioned. I mean, the title is the wisdom of Solomon, right?
He is actually mentioned in the text. He actually speaks kind of his voice speaks in the text, especially with great example of his chapter nine, his great prayer of his prayer to God for wisdom. And when he asked the Lord for wisdom back in first Kings chapter three, you got the famous story of Solomon asking for wisdom in his dream. When God appears to him in a dream.
Well, chapter nine here is his prayer where he desires wisdom more than anything. It's very, very beautiful. And we'll talk about that in the third lesson. So yeah, Solomon is mentioned.
He's talking in the book. He's praying in the book, but he's actually not the author. He's just the honorary figure of this work, right? There's a literary device going on here where his voice is speaking.
So the author, whomever he was, I'll show you some more in just a second, this anonymous author, he is speaking in the voice, or he's writing in the voice of Solomon, because Solomon is the father in the model of Israel's wisdom tradition, right? The Solomonic King Solomon himself and his successors are meant to be the conduit by which God's wisdom goes to Israel and then God's wisdom goes to the whole rest of the world, right? Because God's wisdom is evangelical. It's meant to convert the nations.
Right. So of course, Solomon is going to be the perfect figurehead, the perfect voice to speak in these chapters here, talking about what really matters, what is wisdom, what is false wisdom, what life is all about, justice, judgment, righteousness, etc, etc. Right. So there's a literary technique going on here because Solomon would be the perfect person to speak.
So just on, I've said this in other books as well, just like David is the figurehead or the voice or the father of the Psalms and the Psalm and the Psalm is the figurehead, the father of all of the wisdom, literature in general. So David wrote this limit of all the Psalms, he didn't write all the Psalms, but he's considered the father of the Psalms. So the same idea is going on here. So yeah, Solomon is not as mentioned, he does speak sometimes, but he's not the author.
So who is and when did he write? Well, there's pretty much a virtual consensus from antiquity to modern times. I mean, not really Jewish rabbis don't speak about this much because they don't consider inspired, but Christian antiquity, Catholic antiquity to modern times. This consensus is that it was written sometime in the Hellenistic or Roman period, right?
So if you remember your ancient history, you've got the segway of these great superpowers, Babylon, Syria, then Babylon, then Persia, and then Greece, then Rome, right, the biggies. All right, so there's a transition in the first century before Christ when Rome really takes over. So it's probably written during, it was I think it certainly was written during this time. So conservatively, I would say 100 BC, there's really great scholars who will say it's not quite that late, like maybe 150 BC, firmly entrenched in the Hellenistic era.
But there are some good scholars like your Catholic commentary and scripture series, Marquis Check, says that it's written in the Roman era. So there's some arguments for that as well. So I mean, it could be between 150 to 50 BC. That is, I mean, even just take split in the difference and saying 100 BC, that's really, really close to the time of Jesus.
That's really close to the time of Jesus. So it's going to be pretty much the last book to be written of the Old Testament. And there's a lot of significance to that very exciting historical, and theological significance to a book like this written in the Voice of Solomon, speaking about all these very important things, these questions that have been asked since the beginning of Revelation going all the way back to the Pentateuch and now giving a lot more substance to it right before the time of Christ. That's crazy.
And that's awesome. And we're going to see that all take place here. So if it was written, let's just say 100 BC in this give or take the Hellenistic Roman era, then it was originally written in Greek. So the original language, all the scholars are pretty much unanimous on this too.
The original language was Greek. It's not a translation from the Hebrew. You could pretty much pick up on that when you read, you know, if you ever translated a language, or if you speak to languages, there are some things in one language that you really can't translate into another, idioms, expressions, references, whatever. And when you translate it into another language, you can tell, like, wait a minute, this is a translation.
It doesn't really quite flow. You don't really find that at all in this book. So no one has very rare. Very few exceptions, most people are going to say, well, you don't have those types of little idiosyncrasies going on.
Clearly, this is written originally in Greek, which makes sense because it was pretty much in the Hellenistic era. So it uses very sophisticated Greek as well. I think in our Bible gives a little factoid, a little trivia here, that in this book, there are 1735 words that are used and 335 of them are unique to the entire Greek Old Testament. So what that means is that this author really knew his language.
He knew Greek very, very well. And he had a wide vocabulary. Most people like myself. We just kind of have the same words, the same two, three thousand words we use all the time.
And you got the occasional genius who has a vocabulary of like 5,000, 10,000 words. And they use these really unique words and a really unique situation. Like that dude's a genius or that dude is a genius. They have a wide vocabulary.
That's this guy here who wrote the book of wisdom. Huge vocabulary, sophisticated Greek. And he uses a lot of really theological, I just say philosophical and theological Greek words as well that you're going to find in Greek philosophy like incorruption, immortality, provenance, analogy, etc. Your commentary will discuss a whole bunch of of these.
So it's using sophisticated Greek words as well as sophisticated philosophical theological words to communicate God's revelation. And this is all leading up to the time of Christ, very providentially. One other argument about it's dating is that scholars will point out that sometimes this book, the book of wisdom quotes the Greek Old Testament, which is called the Septuagint. We'll have a little bit more time at the end of the lesson to talk about the Septuagint.
It's abbreviated lxx, which is the Roman numerals 70, because there were 70 scholars who first translated the Hebrew Pentateuch. And again, more to come later on. So the Pentateuch was first translated into Greek right around 200 BC. Give or take.
Okay. And they first translated the five books of Moses, and then after that, the historical books and the prophets and the Psalms, I just need to take a while. I mean, 100 plus years. So what's interesting is that wisdom quotes the Greek Old Testament, which means it's got to be later than that work.
If the very first words of the Greek Old Testament were first translated into 200, and really the whole thing was finished, I mean, it took time. Let's just say again, broad strokes here 100 BC, then it had to have been written after that. So again, it places it in the first century BC. That's very, very late, and again, very close to be described for historical theological reasons, which are very, very exciting.
All right. So sophisticated Greek using really advanced Greek philosophical words quoting the Greek Old Testament. This is definitely a book written by a very faithful Jew. He is anonymous.
We really don't know who it is. Some people say he's an Essene perhaps, or maybe he's Ciraq who wrote the book of Ciraq, which was going to talk about that another Bible study or follow Alexandria or somebody we don't know. It's an anonymous Jew who's obviously very faithful to the law, who is very, very well versed in the writings of the Greeks. He has mastered the Old Testament writings, but he's also really kind of mastered the philosophies of the Greek pagan culture around him and the Greek language.
And so he probably, so again, this is all in the first century BC, and this is going to be most likely in the great city of Alexandria, Egypt. So in Alexandria, just really briefly here are some history. After Babylon conquered Rome and just obliterated the city and burnt down the temple and hauled off tons of people to exile, many Jews fled to Alexandria. They weren't supposed to.
You're never supposed to go back to Egypt, but they did. So Alexandria had a, what was then, a minority of a Jewish population, but over time it grew. And it grew a lot and it became very sophisticated. It became very populated and very advanced.
In fact, it was a rival population to Jerusalem itself because Jerusalem needed to be rebuilt after the return from exile. And that was a slow process. So while Jerusalem is being rebuilt, Alexandria is growing too. So you have a huge Greek speaking population in Alexandria, Egypt, as well as a growing population back home in Jerusalem.
Alright, so this guy is probably living in Alexandria, whoever he was, this faithful Jew, very well educated and all things Greek, living in Alexandria. Alright, so that's the authorship and the dating tells us a lot like we can really pin it down. I think which is really cool to the first century. You've got the kind of the blending of two worlds and keep that in mind actually because that's going to be a really big theme in this book, the blending of these two worlds.
So with that in mind, we can advance the questions and look here at the canonical and really the historical context. So first canonical, I had mentioned this briefly, it is a Deuterocanonical book, Deuterocon 2nd, Canonical is just a canon, it's the second canon which is kind of a misnomer because it's just as inspired as Leviticus or 1st Samuel or Isaiah or whatever it is. But I'll talk more about the Deuterocanonical at the end of this. So it is a Deuterocanonical book, one of the seven.
It is included in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles and included in the wisdom literature collection as we were discussing, but it's not found in Protestant and Jewish Bibles. Alright, so that's the canonical context. Historically, I want to talk more about this because it's fascinating. Alright, so since it was written by a faithful Jew, living in Alexandria, Master Hebrew, Master Greek, very intelligent, very well educated, why is he writing?
What's the context for that? Well, there's a couple of things. First, you could say he is writing to the world leaders. He's writing to kings and monarchs and governors and all the rest.
I mean, the whole book really begins like this. If you have your Bible in front of you, if you open up to chapter one verse one, he begins, love righteousness. That's where I got the title from. But I will say it by the way, straight from chapter one verse one, love righteousness.
So love righteousness, you rulers of the earth and seek him, etc. And then he talks about a whole bunch of stuff. And then at the end of this section, if you go all the way to chapter six verse one, he comes back to this audience that people are writing to listen, therefore, kings and understand judges of the end of the earth, you're you that rule over the multitudes and the down of verse nine, he talks to the monarchs. So very clearly, he does seem to be writing to the kings, the monarchs, the rulers, and talking about righteousness versus unrighteousness about all things that pertain to good and avoidance of people.
All right. So that's, I think, very clear. But you could talk more about it's not just writing to the kings of monarchs, he really is writing to everyone. And he's really writing to all faithful Jews living in this Grecian, Hellenistic culture context and encouraging them to be faithful to the religion, because they're surrounded by paganism, they're surrounded by idolatry.
And so that's a big reason he's going to talk about the Exodus a whole bunch in his book, he'll have allusions to the Exodus and he'll talk a lot about the Exodus in salvation history at the end, because I mean, it makes sense, right? So originally, the Israelites were in slavery to Egypt, and now you've got a whole bunch more Jews and perhaps other people from the other tribes back in Egypt, who are being overwhelmed by Egyptian culture again, right? So it's Egyptian and Greek, right? Because well, that's a whole lot of history right there, but you're in the whole geography of Egypt, but everyone's speaking Greek because of the aftermath of Alexander's empire.
All right, so you kind of have a double whammy on us, like you've got both Greek influence and Egyptian influence. So he's probably writing to encourage their faithfulness, not just rulers, but his people. And that's what this quote here is going to get at. It says, quote, the book of wisdom appears to be aimed at convincing Jews who are tempted by the allurements of the cosmopolitan milieu of Alexandria, not to give up faith, but to regard a tradition as not only intellectually defensible, but truly wiser than the other options presented by the surrounding culture, the worship of idols and the pursuit of mere pleasure, end quote.
And that makes a lot of sense. Of course, this could be of both and situations, writing to rulers and monarchs and leaders, but he's also writing to his faithful Jews living basically in exile in Egypt, surrounded by Egyptian and Christian culture and encouraging them, look, shun the worship of idols, the pursuit of your pleasure is very, very dangerous. So watch out for that. And this is really interesting because it's really relevant, right?
This is really relevant. What he's saying to them is very much applicable to us, the culture, the Western culture, not just American, but you know, really the whole Western culture is really plagued by a lot of spiritual viruses and diseases. And it's very easy to be swept up into the culture of, you know, whatever's going on in Hollywood or whatever's going on in the music industry, whatever's going on in social media or whatever new, I carrot, heresy or ism is going on, modernism or hedonism or whatever. It's very easy to be swept up into that.
And so the lessons that this author of the book of wisdom is talking about can really easily be applied to us. We need to seek what true wisdom is and love true wisdom, pursue her and marry her and we'll get to all of that here really soon. Okay, something else to go on. It was written so close to Christ as I said multiple times.
So therefore, a lot of scholars look at this as a bridge between the Old Testament and the New Testament. It's a segue, a transition between the two testaments. And it does so very, very well. And it really actually serves as a bridge to the New Testament, the fullness of revelation of the Testament, but it's also going to be a bridge for the evangelization of the Greeks in the time of Paul and the rest of the apostles and the expansion of Christianity in the Roman Empire.
This is really interesting and a couple different commentaries emphasize one of the two of these different aspects. Hey, this is Dr. Neck. Thank you so much for listening to this course sample.
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