Texts in Conversation
The Christian theologian Cyprian uses the Wisdom of Solomon as an authoritative source for teaching when he repeats its claim that death was not created by God and that all things were made for life and goodness.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Wisdom of Solomon 1:13
Deuterocanon
11 Beware then of unprofitable murmuring, and keep your tongue from slander; because no secret utterance will go on its way void, and a lying mouth destroys a soul. 12 Don’t court death in the error of your life. Don’t draw destruction upon yourselves by the works of your hands; 13 because God didn’t make death, neither does he delight when the living perish. 14 For he created all things that they might have being. The generative powers of the world are wholesome, and there is no poison of destruction in them, nor has Hades royal dominion upon earth; 15 for righteousness is immortal,
Date: 50 BCE – 50 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
Cyprian, Epistles 55:22
Early Christian
I am amazed that some are so obstinate as to think that penance should not be given to the lapsed, or to judge that pardon must be denied to the penitent, when it is written: “Remember from where you have fallen, and do penance, and do the first works.” This is said, surely, to one who has evidently fallen and whom the Lord urges to rise again by works, because it is written: “Almsgiving frees from death,” and surely not from that death which the blood of Christ once extinguished and from which the water of saving baptism and the grace of our Redeemer have freed us, but from that which creeps in afterward through sins. In another place likewise a time of penance is given, and the Lord threatens the one who does not do penance: “I have much against you,” he says, “that you allow your wife Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, to teach and seduce my servants to commit sexual immorality and eat of sacrifice; and I gave her time to do penance, and she will not repent of her immorality. Look, I cast her into a bed, and those who have committed immorality with her into very great tribulation, unless they do penance for their works.” The Lord would surely not urge to penance unless he promised pardon to the penitent. And in the gospel: “I say to you,” he says, “so there will be joy in heaven over one sinner doing penance, more than over ninety-nine righteous who have no need of penance.” For since it is written, “God did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living,” surely he who wills that no one perish desires that sinners do penance and through penance return again to life. Therefore he also cries through the prophet Joel and says: “And now the Lord your God says: Return to me with your whole heart, and with fasting and weeping and mourning, and rend your hearts and not your garments, and return to the Lord your God, for he is merciful and kind and patient and of great mercy, and one who turns his sentence away from the evil threatened.” In the Psalms too we read the severity and likewise the clemency of God, at once threatening and sparing, punishing to correct and, when he has corrected, preserving: “I will visit their crimes with the rod,” he says, “and their sins with scourges; but my mercy I will not scatter from them.”
Date: 245–260 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... The most ancient of the Fathers to use Wisdom was Clement of Rome who quoted Wisdom 11:22 and 12:12 mixing both from memory (Ep. I ad Cor. 27:5). Eusebius (Ecclesiastical History 5:6) said that Irenaeus used Wisdom. From the time of Clement of Alexandria, the Fathers continually used Wisdom and often called it inspired. Athanasius, Eusebius, Cyprian, and Augustine (though not whole-heartedly) cited it as Scripture, that is, they regarded it as canonical and inspired (and written by Solomon), Origen, Didymus, Ephraem Syrus, Hippolytus Romanus, Chrysostom, and others referred to it in proof of doctrines in the same manner as they referred to the rest of the Bible. The views found in Wisdom are advanced beyond the Old Testament and contain many thoughts found in the New Testament. Perhaps its union of Jewish and Greek ideas explains its anticipation of doctrines and language found in the New Testament ..."
Phillip W. Berwick, The Way of Salvation in the Wisdom of Solomon (Boston University, 1958), 141.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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