Wisdom of Solomon 14:12

Deuterocanon

10 for what was done will be punished together with the one who did it. 11 Therefore there will be a visitation also upon the heathen idols, because, though part of what God created, they became an abomination, snares for human souls and a trap for the feet of the foolish. 12 For the idea of making idols was the beginning of fornication, and the invention of them was the corruption of life; 13 for they did not exist from the beginning, nor will they last forever. 14 For through human vanity they entered the world, and therefore their speedy end has been planned.

Athanasius Against the Heathen 11

Patristic

But of these and such like inventions of idolatrous madness, Scripture taught us beforehand long ago, when it said , The devising of idols was the beginning of fornication, and the invention of them, the corruption of life. For neither were they from the beginning, neither shall they be forever. For the vainglory of men they entered into the world, and therefore shall they come shortly to an end. For a father afflicted with untimely mourning when he has made an image of his child soon taken away, now honoured him as a god which was then a dead man, and delivered to those that were under him ceremonies and sacrifices. Thus in process of time an ungodly custom grown strong was kept as a law. And graven images were worshipped by the commands of kings. Whom men could not honour in presence because they dwelt afar off, they took the counterfeit of his visage from afar, and made an express image of the king whom they honoured, to the end that by this their forwardness they might flatter him that was absent as if he were present. Also the singular diligence of the artificer did help to set forward the ignorant to more superstition: for he, perhaps, willing to please one in authority, forced all his skill to make the resemblance of the best fashion: and so the multitude, allured by the grace of the work, took him now for a god, which a little before was but honoured as a man: and this was an occasion to deceive the world, for men serving either calamity or tyranny, did ascribe unto stones and stocks the incommunicable Name.

 Notes and References

"... For many Christian authorities the criterion for a book’s inclusion in the canon depended not on the language of composition, but on whether it was normative and authoritative for doctrine and public reading. Yet books that fell outside this category could still be canonical at a lower level, and used for private reading among Christians (compare Tertullian, Cult. fem. 1.3: Gallagher 2012: 20–1), and so were certainly not banned or ignored. Even Athanasius of Alexandria, whose festal letter of 367 ce is often held to demarcate a Christian canon, notes that though certain books are not canonical (οὐ κανονιζόμενα μέν), they were authorized by tradition (τετυπωμένα δὲ παρὰ τῶν πατέρων) for reading to recent converts. For Athanasius these works included Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Judith, Tobit, and also Esther, while with most other authorities he included both Esdras A and B in the Old Testament canon ..."

Salvesen, Alison G. "Deuterocanonical and Apocryphal Books" in Salvesen, Alison, and T. M. Law (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of the Septuagint (pp. 385-402) Oxford University Press, 2021

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