Wisdom of Solomon 13:9
Deuterocanon
7 For while they live among his works, they keep searching, and they trust in what they see, because the things that are seen are beautiful. 8 Yet again, not even they are to be excused; 9 for if they had the power to know so much that they could investigate the world, how did they fail to find sooner the Lord of these things? 10 But miserable, with their hopes set on dead things, are those who give the name "gods" to the works of human hands, gold and silver fashioned with skill, and likenesses of animals, or a useless stone, the work of an ancient hand. 11 A skilled woodcutter may saw down a tree easy to handle and skillfully strip off all its bark, and then with pleasing workmanship make a useful vessel that serves life's needs,
Date: 100-50 B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
Source
Augustine Confessions 5.3
Patristic
Fame, indeed, had before spoken of him to me, as most skilled in all becoming learning, and pre-eminently skilled in the liberal sciences. And as I had read and retained in memory many injunctions of the philosophers, I used to compare some teachings of theirs with those long fables of the Manichæans and the former things which they declared, who could only prevail so far as to estimate this lower world, while its lord they could by no means find out, seemed to me the more probable. For You are great, O Lord, and hast respect unto the lowly, but the proud You know afar off. Nor do You draw near but to the contrite heart, nor are You found by the proud, — not even could they number by cunning skill the stars and the sand, and measure the starry regions, and trace the courses of the planets.
Date: 397-400 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
Source
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 ..."
Swete, Henry Barclay
An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek: With an Appendix Containing the Letter of Aristeas
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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