In the
Book of Wisdom, God created man spotless, and the Devil tempting him
occasioned the Fall. So the whole account of the plagues of Egypt
differs as widely as possible, even to absolute contradiction. The
origin of idolatry is explained altogether differently by Philo, and by
the Book of Wisdom. In short, so unsupported is the tradition that many
have supposed an elder Philo as the author. That the second and third
chapters allude to Christ is a groundless hypothesis. The 'just man' is
called 'the son of God', Jehovah, [Greek: pais Kyrion];--but Christ's
specific title which was deemed blasphemous by the Jews, was 'Ben
Elohim', [Greek: uhios tou Theou];--and the fancy that Philo was a
Christian in heart, but dared not openly profess himself such, is too
absurd. Why no traces in his latest work, or those of his middle age?
Why not the least variation in his religious or philosophical creeds in
his latter works, written long after the resurrection, from those
composed by him before, or a few years after, Christ's birth? Some of
Philo's earlier works must have been written when our Lord was in his
infancy, or at least boyhood.
In short, just take all those passages of Philo which most closely
resemble others in the Wisdom of Solomon, and contain the same or nearly
the same thoughts, and write them in opposite columns, and no doubt will
remain that Philo was not the composer of the Book of Wisdom. Philo
subtle, and with long involved periods knit together by logical
connectives: the Book of Wisdom sententious, full of parallelisms,
assertory and Hebraistic throughout.
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