Texts in Conversation
The Christian theologian Augustine’s use of the Wisdom of Solomon shows how Western theologians used Hellenistic Jewish texts as authoritative sources. His quote shows how Wisdom’s portrayal of divine deliverance became a part of Christian tradition.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Wisdom of Solomon 10:21
Deuterocanon
19 but she drowned their enemies, and she cast them up from the bottom of the deep. 20 Therefore the righteous plundered the ungodly, and they sang praise to your holy name, O Lord, and extolled with one accord your hand that fought for them, 21 because wisdom opened the mouth of the mute, and made the tongues of babes speak clearly.
Date: 50 BCE – 50 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
Augustine, Confessions 8.5
Early Christian
When this man of yours, Simplicianus, told me the story of Victorinus, I was eager to imitate him. Indeed, this was Simplicianus' purpose in telling it to me. But when he went on to tell how, in the reign of the Emperor Julian, there was a law passed by which Christians were forbidden to teach literature and rhetoric; and how Victorinus, in ready obedience to the law, chose to abandon his "school of words" rather than your Word, by which you make eloquent the tongues of the mute—he appeared to me not so much brave as happy, because he had found a reason for giving his time wholly to you. For this was what I was longing to do; but I was still bound by the iron chain of my own will. The enemy held my will fast, and had made of it a chain, and had bound me tight with it. For out of the perverse will came lust, and the service of lust ended in habit, and habit, not resisted, became necessity. By these links, as it were, forged together—which is why I called it "a chain"—a hard bondage held me in slavery. But that new will which had begun to spring up in me freely to worship you and to enjoy you, my God, the only certain Joy, was not yet able to overcome my former willfulness, made strong by long indulgence. Thus my two wills—the old and the new, the carnal and the spiritual—were in conflict within me; and by their discord they tore my soul apart.
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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