and Irenaeus, but the whole of the ancients, called the Proverbs of Solomon Πανάρετος Σοφία.[1]
It is also worthy of observation that it is called by Dionysius of Alexandria ἡ σοφὴ βίβλος, and by Gregory of Nazianzum ἡ παιδαγωγικὴ σοφία. These names not only express praise of the book, but they also denote at the same time the circle of human intellectual activity from which it emanated. As the books of prophecy are a product of the נבוּאה, so the Book of the Proverbs is a product of the חכמה, σοφία, the human effort to apprehend the objective σοφία, and thus of φιλοσοφία, or the studium sapientiae. It has emanated from the love of wisdom, to incite to the love of wisdom, and to put into the possession of that which is the object of love - for this end it was written. We need not hesitate, in view of Col 2:8, to call the Book of Proverbs a “philosophical” treatise, since the origin of the name φιλοσοφία is altogether noble: it expresses the relativity of human knowledge as over against the absoluteness of the divine knowledge, and the possibility of an endlessly progressive advancement of the human toward the divine. The characteristic ideas of a dialectic development of thought and of the formation of a scientific system did not primarily appertain to it - the occasion for this was not present to the Israelitish people: it required fructification through the Japhetic spirit to produce philosophers such as Philo, Maimonides, and Spinoza. But philosophy is everywhere present when the natural, moral, positive, is made the object of a meditation which seeks to apprehend its last ground, its legitimate coherence, its true essence and aim. In the view C. B. Michaelis, in his Adnotationes uberiores in Hagiographa, passes from the exposition of the Psalms to that of the Proverbs with the words, “From David's closet, consecrated to prayer, we now pass into Solomon's school of wisdom, to admire the greatest of philosophers in the son of the greatest of theologians.”[2]
- ↑ This name meaning “wisdom, including all virtue”, there are many things to show, was common in Palestine. The Jerusalem Talmud, in a passage quoted by Krochmal, Kerem Chemed, v. 79, divides the canon into תורה, נבואה, and חכמה. Rashi, in Baba bathra, 14b, calls Mishle (Proverbs) and Koheleth (Ecclesiastes) ספרי חכמה. The Book of Koheleth is called (b. Megilla, 7a), according to its contents, חכמתו שׁל שׁלמה. The Song bears in the Syriac version (the Peshito) the inscription chekmetho dechekmotho.
- ↑ “In hoc genere,” says Lord Bacon, De Augmentis Scientiarum, viii. 2, “nihil invenitur, quod ullo modo comparandum sit cum aphorismis illis, quos edidit rex Salomon, de quo testatur Scriptura, cor illi fuisse instar arenae maris. Sicut enim arenae maris universas orbis oras circumdant, ita et sapientia ejus omnia humana non minus quam divina complexa est. In aphorismis vero illis praeter alia magis theologica reperies liquido haud pauca praecepta et monita civilia praestantissima, ex profundis quidem sapientiae penetralibus scaturientia atque in amplissimum varietatis campum excurrentia.” Accordingly, in the same work Bacon calls the Proverbs of Solomon “insignes parabolas s. aphorismos de divina atque morali philosophia.”
