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The Christian theologian Augustine uses the Wisdom of Solomon as an authoritative source for teaching and theology, repeating its description of divine wisdom as a power that renews people and creation.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Wisdom of Solomon 7:27
Deuterocanon
25 For she is a breath of the power of God, and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty. Therefore nothing defiled can find entrance into her. 26 For she is a reflection of everlasting light, an unspotted mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness. 27 Although she is one, she has power to do all things. Remaining in herself, she renews all things. From generation to generation passing into holy souls, she makes friends of God and prophets. 28 For God loves nothing except one who dwells with wisdom. 29 For she is fairer than the sun, and above all the constellations of the stars. She is better than light.
Date: 50 BCE – 50 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
Augustine, Confessions 7.11
Early Christian
And I viewed all the other things that are beneath you, and I realized that they are neither wholly real nor wholly unreal. They are real insofar as they come from you; but they are unreal insofar as they are not what you are. For what remains immutable is truly real. It is good, then, for me to hold fast to God, for if I do not remain in him, I shall not remain in myself either; but he, remaining in himself, renews all things. And you are the Lord my God, since you have no need of my goodness.
Date: 397–400 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... the West, further from the home of the Hebrew canon, and knowing the Old Testament chiefly through the Latin version of the LXX, did not scruple to mingle non-canonical books with the canonical. Hilary and Ruffinus were doubtless checked, the one by the influence of Eastern theologians, the other by the scholarship of Jerome; but Hilary mentions that there were those who wished to raise the number of the canonical books to twenty-four by including Tobit and Judith in the canon. From the end of the fourth century the inclusion of the non-canonical books in Western lists is a matter of course. Even Augustine has no scruples on the subject; he makes the books of the Old Testament forty-four (de doctr. Chr. ii. 13 "his xliv libris Testamenti Veteris terminatur auctoritas"), and among them Tobit, Judith, and two books of Maccabees take rank with the histories; and the two Wisdoms, although he confesses that they were not the work of Solomon, are classed with the Prophets. His judgement was that of his Church ("sunt canonicae scripturae Salomonis libri quinque ... Tobias, Judith ... Machabaeorum libri duo"). The African Church had probably never known any other canon, and its belief prevailed wherever the Latin Bible was read ..."
Henry Barclay Swete, An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek: With an Appendix Containing the Letter of Aristeas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1900).
* 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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