In Praise of Wisdom

Every day for the past 35 years, I have used my favorite translation of the Bible--the New International Version.  At the time I bought it, it was the most accurate translation that also preserved the beauty of the Hebrew Bible in English prose and poetry.  (Recently, a Catholic writer bemoaned our "clunky" translations that fail to inspire beauty and wisdom in the mind of the reader.)

I will always be grateful to my husband, who picked up my bible off the floor before Katrina.  Though I had lived through many hurricanes in New Orleans, I had never experienced flooding as a result, so when I left Metairie for Long Beach, I left my beloved Bible on the floor beside my "prayer chair," thinking I would return in a couple of days.  When he came into the house after I was gone, he picked up things off the floor and lower shelves, thinking we might have flooding.  Amazing!

Anyway, despite my great love for my Protestant version of the Scriptures, I return again and again to my original Bible -- the Confraternity Edition of the old Douay-Rheims translation.  I think I may have had to buy this one as a college textbook, although I don't really remember how I acquired it.  Nevertheless, I am most grateful to own this beautiful Catholic translation also, because it contains the precious Wisdom books omitted in the Protestant Bible. 

The two versions of the Bible originate in the Greek Bible used by Jesus and the disciples.  During His lifetime, Greek was the international language; Hebrew was used by the Jewish scholars so they could read the ancient works -- just as is true today of both Jewish and Christian scholars.  But most of the non-scholars read Greek, even as they spoke Aramaic.  Both Jews and Romans conversed in the common language of Greek.  Before the birth of Jesus, 70 scholars in Alexandria, Egypt, translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek for the common man.  And that translation included the Wisdom Books, originally written in Greek 300-400 years before the time of Jesus.  So the "Septuagint," as it was called for the Seventy who translated it, became the common bible used by Jesus, the synagogues outlying Jerusalem, and eventually, the early Christian church -- which consisted of Jews and Gentiles, who would have known only Greek and nothing of the Hebrew language.

The New Testament, of course, written for the early church, was written in Greek so that all could understand it.  But after the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, the Hebrew scholars met in Jamnia to determine the canon, or sacred text, to be used by the Jews, who at that time were scattered everywhere after the crushing blow by the Romans on Jerusalem.  Because the Greek text was so vital to the early Christian church, the Jewish rabbis determined that only books originally written in Hebrew would be included in their canon, even though they still considered the Wisdom books "inspirational" and worthy of reading for the Jewish people.  (There is even now a difference between books considered "inspired," or "breathed by God," and those considered "inspirational," or "moving and beautiful.")

The early church considered all of the books, both Hebrew and Greek, to be inspired, and they continued to use all of them in their liturgies.  When the Catholic Church defined their canon some 300-400 years after the time of the apostles, they accepted the Wisdom books as inspired.  However, at the time of the Protestant Reformation, with new access to the Hebrew canon and with the interest in ancient texts, the Reformers elected to embrace the Hebrew books only -- thus, the "Protestant" Bible.  Most modern Protestant translations now include the Greek/Wisdom books as the Apocrypha, or Deuterocanonical, Books, determining them to be "inspirational," as did the Hebrew scholars at Jamnia in 70 A.D.

Anyone who opens these Wisdom books and reads with thoughtful attention will know for himself whether these books are simply "inspirational" or truly inspired by the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit of Wisdom coming from the mouth of the Most High, the One Who directed the writing of these books, will also illumine our minds and hearts as we read them.  For true Scripture is not only written at the direction of the Spirit, but is also read and understood under the anointing of the Spirit within us. 

Tomorrow: more on Wisdom itself.