Texts in Conversation
The Christian theologian Origen uses the Wisdom of Solomon as an authoritative source for teaching, repeating its emphasis that wisdom is not found in deceptive people and cannot stay with a sinful person.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Wisdom of Solomon 1:4
Deuterocanon
2 because he is found by those who don’t put him to the test, and is manifested to those who trust him. 3 for crooked thoughts separate from God. His Power convicts when it is tested, and exposes the foolish; 4 because wisdom will not enter into a soul that devises evil, nor dwell in a body that is enslaved by sin. 5 For a holy spirit of discipline will flee deceit, and will depart from thoughts that are without understanding, and will be ashamed when unrighteousness has come in. 6 For wisdom is a spirit who loves man, and she will not hold a blasphemer guiltless for his lips, because God is witness of his inmost self, and is a true overseer of his heart, and a hearer of his tongue.
Date: 50 BCE – 50 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
Origen, Contra Celsum 3.60
Against Celsus
Early Christian
And as we teach, moreover, that wisdom will not enter into the soul of a base man, nor dwell in a body that is involved in sin, we say, Whoever has clean hands, and therefore lifts up holy hands to God, and by reason of being occupied with elevated and heavenly things, can say, The lifting up of my hands is as the evening sacrifice, let him come to us; and whoever has a wise tongue through meditating on the law of the Lord day and night, and by reason of habit has his senses exercised to discern between good and evil, let him have no reluctance in coming to the strong and rational sustenance which is adapted to those who are athletes in piety and every virtue. And since the grace of God is with all those who love with a pure affection the teacher of the doctrines of immortality, whoever is pure not only from all defilement, but from what are regarded as lesser transgressions, let him be boldly initiated in the mysteries of Jesus, which properly are made known only to the holy and the pure. The initiated of Celsus accordingly says, Let him whose soul is conscious of no evil come. But he who acts as initiator, according to the precepts of Jesus, will say to those who have been purified in heart, He whose soul has, for a long time, been conscious of no evil, and especially since he yielded himself to the healing of the word, let such an one hear the doctrines which were spoken in private by Jesus to His genuine disciples. Therefore in the comparison which he institutes between the procedure of the initiators into the Grecian mysteries, and the teachers of the doctrine of Jesus, he does not know the difference between inviting the wicked to be healed, and initiating those already purified into the sacred mysteries!
Date: 248 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... In the Western Church one should not overlook the Muratorian Fragment, perhaps a (late) second-century writing from Rome: In its lines 68–70 it mentions Wisdom (after the Epistle of Jude and two Johannine Epistles) among writings related to the New Testament. Interestingly, according to this text Wisdom was written “by friends of Solomon to his honour” (Sapientia ab amicis Salomonis in honorem ipsius scripta). Even if Origen is well aware of the fact that Wisdom is not accepted everywhere (Principles 4, 4, 6) he himself makes regular use of the book even in Christological debates (see Principles 1, 2, 9; Celsum 3:62; 5:10; 6:63; 8:14). Winston observes: “Although he [Origen] sometimes quotes it [Wisdom] with the skeptical formula he epigegrammene tou Solomontos Sophia (In Iohannem Commentarius 20.4; Contra Celsum 5:29), he also quotes it almost as frequently as a work of Solomon ..."
Tobias Nicklas, “The Apocrypha in the History of Early Christianity,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha, ed. Gerbern S. Oegema (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), 52–73.
* 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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