Anakalypsis / Unveiling the Word
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⚙ Annotations & References ▾
Historic voices 2 ▾
Catechism of the Catholic Church 3× 1-2, 7 City of God 2× 1
Manuscript witnesses 2 ▾
Codex Sinaiticus Aleph c. AD 330-360 Codex Vaticanus B c. AD 300-325
What is Wisdom 8 about?

Continuing the king's praise, the eighth chapter describes wisdom as reaching mightily from one end of the world to the other and ordering all things sweetly, so that the speaker sought her as a man seeks a bride. She is the teacher of the great virtues, temperance and prudence, justice and fortitude, and through her come sound counsel, good repute, and immortality. Yet the king recognizes that no one can possess wisdom unless God grants her, and so he resolves to ask. Presenting wisdom as both the ordering power of the cosmos and a gift only prayer can obtain, the chapter prepares for the prayer that follows.

Historical backdrop

The book comes from Alexandria, the Greek city on the Nile that Alexander founded and the Ptolemies made the intellectual capital of the age. There the largest community of the dispersion lived in Greek, read its Scriptures in the Greek of the Septuagint, and argued philosophy beside the great library, all under the constant pull of a cultured paganism. Wisdom is written into that pressure, in the elegant Greek of a Jew who would not trade the God of his fathers for the wisdom of the Greeks.

The Church Fathers on Wisdom 8
Deuterocanon (Catholic & Orthodox) · Accepted as canonical Scripture by the Catholic and Orthodox traditions and included in the original 1611 KJV (between the Old and New Testaments). Not in the Protestant 66-book canon. Read with the same care you bring to other Scripture, conscious that Protestants and Catholics weigh its authority differently.

Wisdom 8

Wisdom Chapter 8
8
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What is Wisdom 8 about?

Continuing the king's praise, the eighth chapter describes wisdom as reaching mightily from one end of the world to the other and ordering all things sweetly, so that the speaker sought her as a man seeks a bride. She is the teacher of the great virtues, temperance and prudence, justice and fortitude, and through her come sound counsel, good repute, and immortality. Yet the king recognizes that no one can possess wisdom unless God grants her, and so he resolves to ask. Presenting wisdom as both the ordering power of the cosmos and a gift only prayer can obtain, the chapter prepares for the prayer that follows.