“... His views on reading, moreover, are rooted in, and react against, his Greco-Roman education. His assertion of the unity of Scripture must similarly be seen against the background of his defense of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament against the Manichees. In addition, his hermeneutics reflect his theology. He qualifies the central place of the practice of scriptural reading in divine pedagogy with the assertion that interpretation only became necessary after the fall of humankind. [...] Augustine, De Diu. Quaes. 52; De Gen. ad Litt. 8.17; for discussion and further references, see Stock, Augustine, 15-16. By contrast, Genesis Rabbah depicts the Torah as pre-created and with God as a helper at Creation (1.1-2), in a manner more consistent with the place of Logos/Christ in Christian schemas. Note, e.g., Augustine’s explanation of Moses’ inspired authorship of Genesis in Civ. 11.4: “Was the prophet [i.e. Moses] present when God made the heavens and the earth? No, but the Wisdom of God, by whom all things were made, was there, and Wisdom insinuates itself into holy souls and makes them into the friends of God and into His prophets (Wisd 7:25-26), and it silently informs them of His works.” Wisdom, in this case, is Christ/Logos: “God made all things by His Wisdom or Logos, who is named in Scripture the beginning (Gen 1:1), just as he himself, in the gospel, replied to the Jews when they asked him who he was, that he was the beginning (John 8:5)” (11.32; cf. Gen. Rab. 1.1-2 on Torah, Wisdom, and Bereshit). ...”

“... As La Bonnadiére observed, the OT was used much more in Augustine’s polemics just as the example here. But did Wisdom belong to the OT? Augustine would certainly repeat certain select verses from Wisdom the better to engrain them on the minds of catechisand and catechised. [...] Thus, as La Bonnadière notes, Wisdom was used against the Manicheans and the Pelagians to safeguard divine transcendence in creation and salvation. In all these, texts from Wisdom are not merely illustrative. In polemical battle with heretics they were the jumping-off points. They inspired Augustine to think more loftily of God than his enemies did. Wisdom 9:15 (‘for a perishable body weighs down the soul’) is the verse most used, to prove that evil is caused by us, not by cosmic powers. Nevertheless she thinks the most creative contribution by Wisdom to Augustine’s theology was that made by Wisdom 7:27, that Wisdom herself in animas sanctas se transfert, which is a very strong assertion of the all-sufficiency of grace for Christians. [...] So the fact of the matter is that for issues of doctrine and practice Wisdom did carry authority for Augustine in the sense that the book shaped these two. ...”