The importance of the Septuagint in the study of the New Testament cannot be overrated; and I trust it will be found that I have not often omitted to note passages and words in the Book of Wisdom which illustrate the writings of the later Covenant. Many statements and allusions in the Book are confirmed by traditions found in the Targums: these have been gathered from the works of Dr. Ginsburg and Etheridge. In preparing the Commentary great use has been made of the works of C. L. W. Grimm and Gutberlet; the former is too well known and appreciated to need commendation; the latter is useful, and the writer's judgment can be trusted where it is uninfluenced by the desire to condone the mistakes and interpolations of the Latin Vulgate. The great Commentary of Cornelius a Lapide has of course been constantly consulted. The Rev. Canon Churton kindly permitted me to inspect his MS. when my own notes were almost completed; and I have availed myself of his paraphrase in some few passages. Dr. Bissell's work reached me only as my own pages were passing through the press; but it does not afford any new light on obscure passages, and seems to be chiefly a compilation from German sources. Viewing the Book of Wisdom as an important product of Jewish-Alexandrine thought, it seemed desirable to offer a brief sketch of the course taken by Greek philosophy in discussing the momentous questions with which it attempted to cope. An effort is made to define the position occupied by our Book in the Jewish-Alexandrian school, and some notion is given of the influence exercised by that phase of thought on the language, though not on the doctrine, of Christianity. The later development of this school, which led to many fatal errors, is barely noticed, as being beyond the scope of this work, which aims only at affording a help to the student of the period immediately antecedent to Christianity. PROLEGOMENA. I. 1. The Book of Wisdom: its claims on attention.-2. Sketch of the progress of Greek Philosophy.-3. The JewishAlexandrian Philosophy.-4. Its influence on the Theology of the New Testament. 1. THE Book of Wisdom has many claims on our attention and respect. Whatever views we may adopt as to its date and author (matters which will be discussed later), we may confidently assert, that, occupying that period between the writing of the Old and New Testaments, when the more formal utterances of the Holy Spirit for a season had ceased to be heard, and, as far as remaining records attest, God had for the time. ceased to speak by the prophets, it possesses an absorbing interest for every student of the history of Christianity. In conjunction with other writings of the same period, this Book exhibits the mind and doctrine of the Jews, the progress of religious belief among them, and the preparation for Christianity which was gradually being effected by the development of the Mosaic creed and ritual. The gap between the two covenants is here bridged over. Herein is presented a view of the Hebrew religion, definite and consistent, which may well be regarded as a necessary link in the chain of connection between the earlier and later revelations. Nowhere else can be seen so eloquent and profound an enunciation of the faith of a Hebrew educated away from the isolating and confining influence of Palestine, one who had studied the philosophies of East and West, had 1 Lately the Rev. J. H. Blunt has published The Annotated Bible, London, 1879, vol. ii of which contains the Apocrypha, and learned much from those sources, yet acknowledged and exulted in the superiority of his own creed, and who, having tried other systems by that high standard, had found them to fail miserably. Nowhere else can be read so grand a statement of the doctrine of the immortality of the soul as the vindication of God's justice. The identification of the serpent who tempted Eve with Satan, the reference of the introduction of death into the world to the devil, the typical significance assigned to the history and ritual of the Pentateuch, the doctrine of man's freedom of will exerted in bringing upon himself the punishment of his sins, and the sure retribution that accompanies transgression,-in treating of all these subjects, the Book is unique among prechristian writings, and its neglect or omission cannot be compensated by any other existing work. It is remarkable how greatly this Book has been disregarded in England. While the Fathers have quoted it largely and continually, while commentators in old time delighted in plumbing its depths and in finding Christian verities underlying every page, while in later days Germany has poured forth a copious stream of versions and comments, England has been till lately1 content with the single work of R. Arnald, and has the Rev. W. R. Churton has prepared an edition of the Book of Wisdom for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. B left the Book unstudied and uncriticized. Familiar as some of its chapters are to all English churchmen from their forming some of the daily and festival lections in the Calendar, no student of Holy Scripture has seemed to think the Book of Wisdom worth serious labour, and it has been left for other nations to bestow upon this remarkable work that diligence which it deserves and will well repay. 2. Before entering upon an examination of the text of the Book of Wisdom, some preliminary inquiries are necessary for determining its place in the history of religious development and its connection with preceding and subsequent systems. If, as we shall show reason hereafter for asserting, the work was produced at Alexandria, and is a genuine offspring of the Jewish-Alexandrian school which took its rise in that celebrated centre of commerce and philosophy, a short space must be devoted to an investigation into the origin, tenets, and influence of that school. To trace at length its effects in producing gnosticism and other heresies in Christian times is beyond the scope of this outline, which aims only at recording its rise, and making a brief examination of the question, whether the Gospel owes any of its doctrines to this system. If we make a distinction between Theology and Philosophy, we must say Theology has to do with faith, Philosophy with research. Philosophy claims to systematise the conceptions furnished by Theology and Science, and to provide a doctrine which shall explain the world and the destiny of man'. The basis of Theology is revelation; this principle Philosophy ignores, and casting away the help thus offered endeavours and claims to elucidate the phenomena of the universe by analysis and generalisation. Let us see first what progress the purely heathen Greek Philosophy made towards solving the great problems of being, and next how it fared when combined with a belief in revelation. The history of Greek Philosophy may be divided into three periods, the Pre-Socratic, the Socratic, and the Post-Socratic 2. Involved in a polytheistic religion, the earliest Greek philosophers attempted in vain to explain the mysteries around them by the agencies of the deities in whom the poets had taught them to believe. Failing to construct any satisfactory theory out of these elements, Thales and the Ionic school tried other expedients. At one time water, at another time fire, at another air, became in their view the cause of life and power, the substance, as it were, of which all phenomena were only the modes. The utmost development at which these Physicists arrived was to endow this primary element, be it air or other substance, with intelligence, making it in fact equivalent to a soul possessed of reason and consciousness. Anaximander (B. c. 610) held that The Infinite' (rò ameipov) was the origin of all things. What he meant exactly by this term it is perhaps impossible to discover; but being a mathematician, and prone to regard abstractions as entities,' he was led to formulate a distinction between all Finite Things and the Infinite All'.' But this 'Infinite All' was not developed into the idea of Infinite mind till the school of the Eleatics arose. Meantime the interest of the history centres itself upon the mysterious and justly celebrated Pythagoras, the great founder of the Mathematicians. He was a lover of Wisdom for its own sake, not for the practical purposes to which it may be applied; hence it was perhaps that he adopted the study of numbers as best able to draw the mind away from the finite to the 1 Lewes, Hist. of Philosophy, I. xviii. ed. 1867. In the following brief sketch of Greek Philosophy I have chiefly followed Mr. Lewes. 2 Zeller, Die Philosophie der Griechen, i. 111 ff. 3 Ὁ τῆς τοιαύτης ἀρχηγὸς φιλοσοφίας. Aristot. Met. Α. c. 3. Thales is considered to have been born about B. c. 636. Ritter, Hist. of Ancient Phil. i. bk. III. chap. 3. pp. 195, ff. Eng. trans. Mosheim's trans. of Cudworth's Intell. Syst. i. pp. 35, 147 Lewes, Hist. of Philos. i. 15. |