, constituting together the
Adam Kadmon
, the second Adam of St. Paul, the incarnate one in the Messiah.
Were it not for the silence of Philo and Josephus, which I am unable to explain if the Wisdom of Solomon was written so long before Christ, I might perhaps incline to believe it composed shortly after, if not during, the persecution of the Jews in Egypt under Ptolemy Philopator. This hypothesis would give a particular point to the bitter exposure of idolatry, to the comparison between the sufferings of the Jews, and those of idolatrous nations, to the long rehearsal and rhetorical declaration of the plagues of Egypt, and to the reward of 'the just man' after a death of martyrdom; and would besides help to explain the putting together of the first ten chapters, and the fragment contained in the remaining chapters. They were works written at the same time, and by the same author: nay, I do not think it absurd to suppose, that the chapters after the tenth were annexed by the writer himself, as a long explanatory appendix; or, possibly, if they were once a separate work, these nine concluding chapters were parts of a book composed during the persecution in Egypt, the introduction and termination of which, being personal and of local application, were afterwards omitted or expunged in order not to give offence to the other Egyptians,—perhaps, to spare the shame of such Jews as had apostatized through fear, and in general not to revive heart-burnings. In modern language I should call these chapters in their present state a Note on c. x. 15-19.
On a reperusal of this Book, I rather believe that these latter chapters never formed part of any other work, but were composed as a sort of long explanatory Postscript, with particular bearing on certain existing circumstances, to which this part of the Jewish history was especially applicable. Nay, I begin to find the silence of Philo and Josephus less inexplicable, and to imagine that I discover the solution of this problem in the very title of the Book. No one expects to find any but works of authenticity enumerated in these writers; but to this a work, calling itself the Wisdom of Solomon, both being a fiction and never meant to pass for anything else, could make no pretensions. To have approximated it to the Holy Books of the nation would have injured the dignity of the Jewish Canon, and brought suspicion on the genuine works of Solomon, while it would have exposed to a charge of forgery a composition which was in itself only an innocent dramatic monologue.
N. B.
This hypothesis possesses all the advantages, and involves none of the absurdity of that which would attribute the 'Ecclesiasticus' to the infamous Jason, the High Priest. More than one commentator, I find, has suspected that the Wisdom of Solomon and the second book of Maccabees were by the same author. I think this nothing.
Ib. p. 36.
Philo throws out a number of declarations, that shew his own and the Jewish belief in a secondary sort of God, a God subordinate in origin to the Father of all, yet most intimately united with him, and sharing his most unquestionable honours.