(v. 1, xxxiii. 23), that is, they are humanized, and the Elohim beings
(including the Satan) in the prologue belong to a popular story, the
figure of Satan being used by the author to account for Job's
calamities; in Tobit the “affable” Raphael is a clever man of the
world. Except in Wisdom ii. 24 (where the serpent of Gen. iii. is
called “Diabolos"), there is mention of one demon only (Asmodeus,
in Tob. iii . 8, 17), and that a Persian figure. Job alone introduces
the mythical dragons (iii. 8, vii. 12, i.. 13, xxvi. 12) that occur in
late prophetical writings (Amos ix. 3; Isa. xxvii. i); as the earliest
of the Wisdom books, it is the friendliest to supernatural machinery.
Like the prophetical writings before Ezekiel, the Wisdom books, while they recognize the sacrificial ritual as an existing custom, attach little importance to it as an element of religious life (the fullest mention of it is in Ecclus. xxxv. 4 ff., 1); the difference between prophets and sages is that the former do not regard the ritual as of divine appointment (Jer. vii. 22) and oppose it as non-moral, while the latter, probably accepting the law as divine, by laying most stress on the universal side of religion, lose sight of its local and mechanical side (see Ecclus. xxxv. 1-3). Their broad culture (reinforced, perhaps, by the political conditions of the time) made them comparatively indifferent to Messianic hopes and to that conception of a final judgment of the nations that was closely connected with these hopes: a Messiah is not mentioned in their writings (not in Prov. xvi. 10-15), and a final judgment only in Wisdom of Solomon, where it is not of nations but of individuals. In this regard a comparison between them and Daniel, Enoch and Psalms of Solomon is instructive. Their interest is in the ethical training of the individual on earth.
There was nothing in their general position to make them inhospitable to ethical conceptions of the future life, as is shown by the fact that so soon as the Egyptian-Greek idea of immortality made itself felt in Jewish circles it was adopted by the author of the Wisdom of Solomon; but prior to the 1st century B.C. it does not appear in the Wisdom literature, and the nationalistic dogma of resurrection is not mentioned in it at all. Everywhere, except in the Wisdom of Solomon, the Underworld is the old Hebrew inane abode of all the dead, and therefore a negligible quantity for the moralist. Nor do the sages go beyond the old position in their ethical theory: they have no philosophical discussion of the basis of the moral life; their standard of good conduct is existing law and custom; their motive for right-doing is individual eudaemonistic, not the good of society, or loyalty to an ideal of righteousness for its own sake, but advantage for one's self. They do not attempt a psychological explanation of the origin of human sin; bad thought (yēṣer ra‘, Ecclus. xxxvii. 3) is accepted as a fact, or its entrance into the mind of man is attributed (Wisd. ii. 24)to the devil (the serpent of Gen. iii.) . In fine, they eschew theories and confine themselves to visible facts.
It is in keeping with their whole point of view that they claim no divine inspiration for themselves: they speak with authority, but their authority is that of reason and conscience. It is this definitely rational tone that constitutes the differentia of the teaching of the sages. For the old external law they substitute the internal law: conscience is recognized as the power that approves or condemns conduct (ψυχή, Ecclus. xiv. 2; συνείδησις, Wisd. Sol. xvii. 11). Wisdom is represented as the result of human reflection, and thus as the guide in all the affairs of life. It is also sometimes conceived of as divine (in Wisd. of Sol. and in parts of Prov. and Ecclus., but not in Eccles.), in accordance with the Hebrew view, which regards all human powers as bestowed directly by God; it is identified with the fear of God (Job xxviii. 28; Prov. i. 7; Ecclus. xv. 1 ff.) and even with the Jewish law (Ecclus. xxiv. 23). But in such passages it remains fundamentally human; no attempt is made to define the limits of the human and the divine in its composition—it is all human and all divine. The personification of wisdom reaches almost the verge of hypostasis: in Job xxviii. it is the most precious of things; in Prov. viii. it is the companion of God in His creative work, itself created before the world; in Ecclus. xxiv. the nationalistic conception is set forth: wisdom, created in the beginning, compasses heaven and earth seeking rest and finds at last its dwelling-place in Jerusalem (and so substantially 4th Maccabees); the height of sublimity is reached in Wisd. of Sol. vii., where wisdom, the brightness of the everlasting light, is the source of all that is noblest in human life.
Greek influence appears clearly in the sages' attitude toward the phenomena of life. God, they hold, is the sole creator and ruler of the world; yet man is free, autonomous—God is not responsible for men's faults (Ecclus. xv. 11-20); divine wisdom is visible in the works of nature and in beasts and man (Job xxxviii. f.; Pss. viii., cxxxix.) . On the other hand, there is recognition of the inequalities and miseries of life (Job; Ecclus. xxxiii. 11 ff., xl. 1-11; Eccles.), and, as a result, scepticism as to a moral government of the world. In Job, which is probably the earliest of the philosophical books, the question whether God is just is not definitely answered: the prologue affirms that the sufferings of good men, suggested by the sneer of Satan, are intended to demonstrate the reality of human goodness; elsewhere (v. 17, xxxiii. 17 ff.) they are regarded as disciplinary; the Yahweh speeches declare man's inability to understand God's dealings; the prosperity of the wicked is nowhere explained. The ethical manuals, Prov. (except xxx. 2-4) and Ecclus., are not interested in the question and ignore it; Agur's agnosticism (Prov. xxx. 2-4) is substantially the position of the Yahweh speeches in Job directed against the “unco-wise” of his day. Koheleth's scepticism (in the original form of Ecclesiastes) is deep-seated and far-reaching: though he is a theist, he sees no justice in the world, and looks on human life as meaningless and result less. For him death is the end-all, and it is against some such view as this that the argument in Wisd. of Sol. ii.-v. is directed. With the establishment of the belief in ethical immortality this phase of scepticism vanished from the Jewish world, not, however, without leaving behind it works of enduring value.
In all the Wisdom books virtue is conceived of as conterminous with knowledge. Salvation is attained not by believing but by the perception of what is right; wisdom is resident in the soul and identical with the thought of man. Yet, with this adoption of the Greek point of view, the tone and spirit of this literature remain Hebrew.
The writings of the sages are all anonymous. No single man appears as creator of the tendency of thought they represent; they are the product of a period extending over several centuries, but they form an intellectual unity, and presuppose a great body of thinkers. The sages may be regarded as the beginners of a universal religion: they felt the need of permanent principles of life, and were able to set aside to some extent the local features of the current creed. That they did not found a universal religion was due, in part at least, to the fact that the time was not ripe for such a faith; but they left material that was taken up into later systems.
Literature.—K. Siegfried, Philo von Alexandria (1875); J. Drummond, Philo Judaeus (1888); H. Bois, Origines d. l. phil. Judéo-Alex. (1890); T. K. Cheyne, Job and Sol. (1887) and Jew. Relig. Life, &.c . (1898). (C. H. T.*)
WISE, HENRY ALEXANDER (1806-1876), American politician and soldier, was born at Drummondtown (or Accomac), Accomack county, Virginia, on the 3rd of December 1806. He graduated from Washington (now Washington and Jefferson) College, Pennsylvania, in 1825, and began to practise law in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1828. He returned to Accomack county, Va., in 1830, and served in the National House of Representatives in 1833-1837 as an anti-nullification Democrat, but broke with the party on the withdrawal of the deposits from the United States Bank, and was re-elected to Congress in 1837, 1839 and 1841 as a Whig, and in 1843 as a Tyler Democrat. From 1844 to 1847 he was minister to Brazil. In 1850-1851 he was a member of the convention to revise the Virginia constitution, and advocated white manhood suffrage, internal improvements, and the abolition of imprisonment for debt. In 1855 he was elected governor of the state (1856-1860) as a Democrat. John Brown's raid occurred during his term, and Wise refused to reprieve Brown after sentence had been passed. He strongly opposed secession, but finally voted for the Virginia ordinance, was commissioned brigadier-general in the Confederate army and served throughout the war. He died at Richmond, Va., on the 12th of September 1876. He wrote Seven Decades of the Union 1790-1860 {1872).
His son, John Sergeant Wise (b. 1846), United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia in 1881-1883, and a member of the National House of Representatives in 1883-1885, wrote The End of an Era (1899) and Recollections of Thirteen Presidents (1906).
See the Life of H. A. Wise, by his grandson, B. H. Wise (1899).
WISE, ISAAC MAYER (1819-1900), American Jewish theologian, was born in Bohemia, but his career is associated with the organization of the Jewish reform movement in the United States. From the moment of his arrival in America (1846) his influence made itself felt. In 1854 he was appointed rabbi at Cincinnati. Some of his actions roused considerable opposition. Thus he was instrumental in compiling a new prayer-book, which he designed as the “American Rite” (Minhag America). He was opposed to political Zionism, and the Montreal Conference (1897), at his instigation, passed resolutions disapproving of the attempt to establish a Jewish state, and affirming that the Jewish Messianic hope pointed to a great universal brotherhood. In keeping with this denial of a Jewish nationality, Wise believed in national varieties of Judaism, and strove to harmonize the synagogue with local circumstances and sympathies. In 1848
