Patriot Act...
Book of Wisdom...
The naming of these things makes me suspect of their content
Book of Wisdom...
The naming of these things makes me suspect of their content
Polygamy and Polyandry
- Thread starter Gatekeeper
- Start date
As you say.
Allowances should be made for the fact that it was written 2100 years ago?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Wisdom
The Wisdom of Solomon or Book of Wisdom is a Jewish work, written in Greek, and most likely composed in Alexandria, Egypt. Generally dated to the mid first century BC. the central theme of the work is "Wisdom" itself, appearing under two principal aspects. In its relation to man, Wisdom is the perfection of knowledge of the righteous as a gift from God showing itself in action. In direct relation to God, Wisdom is with God from all eternity.[2] It is one of the seven Sapiential or wisdom books included within the Septuagint, along with Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs (Song of Solomon), Job, and Sirach, and is included in the canon of Deuterocanonical books by the Roman Catholic Church and the anagignoskomena (Gr. ἀναγιγνωσκόμενα, meaning "those which are to be read") of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Most Protestants consider it part of the Apocrypha.
The book is addressed to the rulers of the earth, urging them to love righteousness and seek wisdom; the wicked think that all is chance and that they should enjoy each day, but they are deluded.[4] In the second section Solomon (not explicitly named, but strongly implied) tells of his search for wisdom.
The Wisdom of Solomon can be linked to several forms of ancient literature, both Jewish and non-Jewish, but it clearly belongs with biblical Wisdom books such as the Book of Job, one of only five such books among ancient Jewish literature.[5] In terms of classical genre it has been identified as an encomium and with the Greek genre of the "exhortatory discourse", by which a teacher attempts to persuade others to a certain course of action ...
The Wisdom of Solomon was written in Greek, in Alexandria (Egypt), in the late 1st century BC to early 1st century AD; the author's prime literary source was the Septuagint, in particular the Wisdom literature and the Book of Isaiah, and he was familiar with late Jewish works as the Book of Enoch and with Greek philosophical literature.[20] It is uncertain whether the book has a single author or comes from a school of writers, but recent scholarship has favoured regarding it as a unified work.[21] In either case its blend of Greek and Jewish features suggests a learned Hellenistic background, and despite the address to the "rulers of the world" the actual audience was probably members of the author's own community who were tempted to give up their Jewishness in the face of the temptations of Greek culture and the hostile conditions facing Jews in the Greek world ...
EDIT
I don't think most readers these days believe it was really written by Solomon.
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Gatekeeper
Shades of Reason
It's pretty cool, at least to me, how John 1 and proverbs 8 correlate, and how wisdom is said to be a tree of life, and how Ecclesiastes states that all is vanity and there's nothing better to do under the sun than eat, drink, and be merry, and how she is said to cry from the gates of the city calling out to the simple, urging us to find her … For GOD'S sake just look and find and live your life … for goodness sakes please … You were meant to enjoy life!! That's how I read it anyway. Why else would we be here if not to enjoy the fruits of all God's work?
Why are we here is the big question?
If I eat too much ice cream I get sick. Everything comes in shades and degrees. There is a time for everything under the sun? Ecclaistiastes says that too?
Gatekeeper
Shades of Reason
I agree … If I stay in the water too long my skin gets all raisiny and if I stay outside too long without enough to cover me when it's cold or raining I get too cold or too wet. If I don't eat enough I get hungry. If I don't have enough enjoyment I get to feeling miserable. Not enough veggies and my health will decline. If I don't get what my mind and body and soul needs I get imbalanced and unhealthy. As a living soul, there are things needed to be happy, healthy, comfortable, joyful, and productive. So yeah … I agree.
Interesting, what is the historical backdrop here, Thomas?
Gatekeeper
Shades of Reason
Old school Jewish families still hold true to the panentheistic aspect of God. Like the whole and what's outside the whole too. A man a woman and then on to the children they create together, so on so forth. That's an ever increasing very fruitful and multiplying way of life and understanding of God … that umm … makes a lot of sense to me.
Whatever I can do you can do and more..
In him we live and breathe and have our being..
G!d is all there is.
Be still and know that I am G!d.
In him we live and breathe and have our being..
G!d is all there is.
Be still and know that I am G!d.
Chalk and cheese, really ...
And yes, context. I don't think anyone could seriously contend its title.
Well, the white west has been enjoying that fruit just a little too much, wouldn't you say? We've been gorging on it, in fact ... Scripture says "And the Lord God took man, and put him into the paradise of pleasure, to dress it, and to keep it" (Genesis 2:15). 'Dress' is the translation of the verb abad which literally means 'to serve' or 'to work' and the meaning is always that the doer is subject to the duty. Keep is from shamar which is 'to keep, guard, keep watch and ward, protect ... '
All in all, we've not done a good job at all, we've used up and wasted in a most profligate manner.
Oooh, a bit involvd, I think.
I'm no expert on the debate, but it goes along these lines:
Christianity, and the Abrahamics generally, see the world as created. All nature is created. It is created by God, but it is not God. It's own nature, its own mode of being, is not inherently divine. The distinction between the Uncreate (God) and the created (nature) is absolute and evident.
Pantheism sees the world as God. God is the cosmos, the cosmos is God, God is not transcendent, nor indeed immanent in that sense. Everything is a form of God ... so yes, earthquakes and lightning etc., is God, sunsets and butterflies, etc., etc.
Panentheism splits the difference. It embraces pantheist ideals, but holds simultaneously that while the world is God, God is Transcendent.
Guessing here, but I'd day theology came up against Plato and Greek philosophy generally, which hold a kind of emanationism, that the Good overflows down through the created orders, the classic image being 'the golden chain' or the image of a rockpool overflowing into another pool which overflows ... the idea interpreted as everythings the same stuff all the way down, just different degrees of purity.
Philo liked the idea, as did Basilides and Valentinus. So did Neoplatonists like Plotinus and Proclus. The Arian idea of Jesus as 'above' human but 'below' God, a kind of intermediary deity, embraces the idea. Christianity would reject any philosophy which held a) the world to be essentially the same substance as God and b) the relations within the Trinity is one of hierarchy.
Now ...
The discussion between the Catholic West and Orthodox East highlights a matter of outlook.
The Greeks have this idea of essence (Gk ousia Lt essentia) and energies (Gk energeia Lt actus). In Eastern Orthodox theology God's ousia is "all that subsists by itself and which has not its being in another", distinct from God's energeia, His activities as actualised in the world.
The argument then becomes a) is this introducing duality into the Godhead (Latins would argue no and therefore reject the distinction perhaps out of hand) and b) if the world is God's energeia then is not the world inherently divine ...
So the West and East still argue that one ...
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