Wisdom of Solomon

Where the Book Is Found

The Wisdom of Solomon is a book of nineteen chapters, also known as the Book of Wisdom. It does not appear in the New Korean Revised Version used by Korean Protestants. It is included in the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament, and in the Catholic and Orthodox Bibles that follow it. In Korean, it can be read in the Common Translation and in the Bible (Seonggyeong, 2005) published by the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Korea.

Its contents are generally divided into three parts.

• Chapters 1–5: The fates of the righteous and the wicked are contrasted. The wicked regard life as fleeting and persecute the righteous, but the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God (Wisdom 3:1). The book explains that God created human beings to be immortal and that death entered the world through the envy of the devil (Wisdom 2:23–24).
• Chapters 6–9: Wisdom is praised in the voice of a king. Wisdom is likened to the brightness of eternal light (Wisdom 7:26), and chapter 9 contains the king's prayer for wisdom.
• Chapters 10–19: The book recounts how wisdom guided the righteous through history, from Adam to the Exodus. It contrasts the plagues suffered by Egypt with the favor shown to Israel, and chapters 13–15 contain an extended critique of idolatry.

Background

Solomon's name does not appear in the text. Because the speaker presents himself as a king commanded to build the temple (Wisdom 9:7–8), however, the book has traditionally been attributed to Solomon. Most scholars today hold that the book was composed in Greek from the outset. Many believe its author was a Greek-speaking Jew living in Alexandria, Egypt, who wrote around the first century BC, although scholars differ on the date. A distinctive feature of the book is its use of the vocabulary of Greek philosophy to explain the Jewish faith, and it is treated as a source for Jewish thought of the intertestamental period.

Relationship to the New Testament

The New Testament does not quote the Wisdom of Solomon directly. Scholars, however, point to several passages with similar ideas and expressions.

• Romans 1:18–32, which deals with idolatry and the corruption that follows from it, resembles the line of thought in Wisdom 13–14.
• The description of the Son as the "brightness" of God's glory in Hebrews 1:3 is often compared with Wisdom 7:26.
• The words of the wicked, who mock the righteous man as a son of God and propose to put him to the test (Wisdom 2:12–20), are sometimes read alongside the mockery at the foot of the cross (Matthew 27:43).

There are two views of these similarities: one holds that the New Testament writers knew the Wisdom of Solomon, while the other holds that they simply shared the same Jewish wisdom tradition.

The Question of Canon and Denominational Views

• The Catholic Church regards the Wisdom of Solomon as a deuterocanonical book (a book whose canonical status was settled later) belonging to the Old Testament canon. The Council of Trent confirmed this in 1546.
• The Orthodox Church likewise includes it in the Old Testament, following the Septuagint tradition.
• Protestants classify books not found in the Hebrew Old Testament as Apocrypha (books outside the canon). Martin Luther grouped the Apocrypha separately in his German Bible, presenting them as books not equal to Holy Scripture yet profitable to read. Chapter 1, section 3 of the Westminster Confession of Faith confesses that the Apocrypha are not of divine inspiration and have no authority in the church. The Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles state that the Apocrypha are read for example of life and instruction of manners, but are not applied to establish any doctrine.

In Korean Protestantism, the term "Books of Wisdom" (jihyeseo) is also used as a collective name for wisdom literature such as Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes, so it is easily confused with this book.

In Korean Churches

Protestant churches do not read the Wisdom of Solomon in worship or use it as a preaching text. It is treated mainly in seminary courses on biblical introduction or in studies of the intertestamental period. In the Catholic Church it is used among the readings at Mass, and Wisdom 3 is one of the readings for funeral Masses.