WISDOM AND APOCALYPTICISM IN THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON

Extract

If Emerson was correct that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” then the mind of the Wisdom of Solomon's author may be considered both supple and expansive, since an ongoing theme of scholarship on the book has been the effort to reconcile in one way or another its real or seeming inconsistencies. The field has tacitly agreed to categorize the Wisdom of Solomon as a wisdom book, which in some ways seems obvious, not least because of the broad hint offered by its Greek title.The title found in the Septuagint actually provides two hints: the word “wisdom” itself, and its attribution of the work to the hero of the sapiential tradition, Solomon. The Latin translations call it “The Book of Wisdom.” The book's ancient designation may not be the title provided by the original author, but it does attest that the work was received by early readers as an example of wisdom literature. Nevertheless, an undercurrent of unease with the common classification has also emerged. In one widely respected collection of essays on Second Temple period texts, the author of the chapter on the Wisdom of Solomon states bluntly that “there is no type of literature in the Bible into which Wisdom as a whole fits,”Maurice Gilbert, “Wisdom Literature,” in Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period (ed. Michael E. Stone; CRINT, section 2; Literature of the Jewish People in the Period of the Second Temple and the Talmud 2; Assen: Van Gorcum; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984) 307. although the book is, for want of a better location, discussed in the collection's section on wisdom literature. Another scholar does not shrink from saying that it “is clearly a wisdom book,” although he also notes that by “focusing on only one or another aspect of the book, one could make a case for a variety of literary genres.”Lester L. Grabbe, Wisdom of Solomon (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997) 25. A third simply comments that the text is “elusive.”John M. G. Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora from Alexander to Trajan (323 B.C.E.–117 B.C.E.) (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996) 181.