Texts in Conversation
The Christian theologian Tertullian uses the Wisdom of Solomon as an authoritative source for teaching, repeating its description of God knowing the innermost thoughts of people and that nothing is hidden from him.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Wisdom of Solomon 1:6
Deuterocanon
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. 7 Because the spirit of the Lord has filled the world, and that which holds all things together knows what is said. 8 Therefore no one who utters unrighteous things will be unseen; neither will Justice, when it convicts, pass him by.
Tertullian, Concerning the Soul 15
Early Christian
For, when one reads of God as being the searcher and witness of the heart; when His prophet is reproved by His discovering to him the secrets of the heart; when God Himself anticipates in His people the thoughts of their heart, Why do you think evil in your hearts? When David prays Create in me a clean heart, O God, and Paul declares, With the heart man believes unto righteousness, and John says, By his own heart is each man condemned; when, lastly, he who looks on a woman so as to lust after her, has already committed adultery with her in his heart, then both points are cleared fully up, that there is a directing faculty of the soul, with which the purpose of God may agree; in other words, a supreme principle of intelligence and vitality (for where there is intelligence, there must be vitality), and that it resides in that most precious part of our body to which God especially looks: so that you must not suppose, with Heraclitus, that this sovereign faculty of which we are treating is moved by some external force; nor with Moschion, that it floats about through the whole body; nor with Plato, that it is enclosed in the head; nor with Zenophanes, that it culminates in the crown of the head; nor that it reposes in the brain, according to the opinion of Hippocrates; nor around the basis of the brain, as Herophilus thought; nor in the membranes thereof, as Strato and Erasistratus said; nor in the space between the eyebrows, as Strato the physician held; nor within the enclosure of the breast, according to Epicurus: but rather, as the Egyptians have always taught, especially such of them as were accounted the expounders of sacred truths; in accordance, too, with that verse of Orpheus or Empedocles: Man has his (supreme) sensation in the blood around his heart.
Date: 198–200 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... Turning to the Western Church, the earliest evidence comes from Irenaeus (died 202), who, although he never quotes from the Book of Sirach, includes quotations from Baruch and the Additions to Daniel in his Against Heresies. He cites these as the works of 'Jeremiah the prophet' and 'Daniel the prophet,' respectively, and also quotes from the Wisdom of Solomon. This suggests that he likely considered the books of the Apocrypha as canonical. Tertullian (died 220) also quotes from our book in works such as Against the Gnostics and On the Exhortation of Chastity, using the same formula, "as it is written," that he employs for the Hebrew Canon. Cyprian (died 258), in his Testimonies and letters, frequently quotes from the Book of Sirach and introduces them with phrases like "as it is written" or "Divine Scripture says." Methodius (circa 311), bishop of Lycia and later Tyre, freely quotes from the Book of Sirach, the Wisdom of Solomon, and Baruch, treating them as 'Scripture.' Hilary of Poitiers (died 368) lists the books of the Old Testament in his Prologue to the Book of Psalms, including only the Epistle of Jeremiah from the Apocrypha but adds that some also count the Book of Tobit and the Book of Judith, totaling 24 books to align with the number of Greek letters. Nonetheless, he cites Ecclesiasticus and the Wisdom of Solomon as 'prophets,' implying his belief in their canonicity ..."
Charles, R. H.
The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament
(p. 302) Oxford University Press, 1913
* 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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