proverbios

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FOR SEVERAL years now I have spentcountless hours in the company of theWisdom Woman, reflecting on her, and

on the world she has created. There are manytexts in the bible in which wisdom is personi-fied. I will explore some of these texts, to showhow they present wisdom in divine categories,that is, she is described in language and con-cepts that indicate that the bible is presentingher as a feminine expression of God.

There are various senses in which Biblicalscholars and theologians use the term ‘wis-dom’. Sometimes it means those books of thebible that are designated wisdom literature,such as the Book of Proverbs, Job,Ecclesiastes, Sirach, Baruch and the Wisdomof Solomon. Sometimes the term ‘wisdom’simply means a quality or an attribute, eitherof human beings or of God. At other times theterm ‘wisdom’ is used of personified wisdom,or Sophia, the Greek form of the word, and itis this personified wisdom who is the subjectof my article. When I am referring specificallyto personified wisdom I will use the nameSophia to save confusion.

The wisdom literature remains largely amarginalized body of biblical literature. Partlythis is because the themes of the wisdom lit-erature are not always so overtly ‘religious’as, for example, the books of Exodus or theProphets, and the literature deals more withthemes about creation, and partly becausesome of the wisdom literature is deutero-ca-nonical, that is, it is not accepted as SacredScripture by all the Christian traditions. Yetthe popularity of the books of Proverbs, Job,Ecclesiastes, Sirach and the Wisdom of Solo-mon in the medieval period is well attestedand the early Christian writers, including Pauland the writer of John’s Gospel, were wellaware of them and drew upon these texts to

express their christologies.The biblical wisdom books contain five

great poems in which Wisdom is personifiedas a feminine figure. The poems are to be foundin Job 28, Proverbs 8-9, Sirach 24, the Wis-dom of Solomon 6-9 and Baruch 3-4. Thesepoems are hymns in praise of Sophia describ-ing her activities, usually in relation to crea-tion. The interpretation and understanding ofthese poems have been described as ‘one ofthe most thoroughly debated problems in thewhole of the wisdom literature.’ I will beginby looking closely at two of these poems, onefrom the Book of Proverbs and the other fromthe Wisdom of Solomon. I will also referbriefly to some other wisdom texts relevant tothe topic. A second part of the article will bedevoted to looking at the way New Testamentwriters used categories from the Sophia textsand applied them to Jesus. The two main textsI will look at in this New Testament sectionwill be the hymn in Colossians 1:15-20 andthe Prologue to John’s Gospel. In my conclu-sion I will make some comments on the sig-nificance of the Sophia texts for theology.

Proverbs: In Harmony with Creation

The first poem I will look at does come froma canonical book, the book of Proverbs. In thebook of Proverbs the poem in question is tobe found in Chapter 8:22-9:5 and it reads:

8:22 The LORD created me at the beginningof his work, the first of his acts of long ago.23 Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before thebeginning of the earth.24 When there were no depths I was broughtforth, when there were no springs aboundingwith water.25 Before the mountains had been shaped, be-fore the hills, I was brought forth—26 when he had not yet made earth and fields,

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or the world’s first bits of soil.27 When he established the heavens, I was there,when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,28 when he made firm the skies above, when heestablished the fountains of the deep,29 when he assigned to the sea its limit, so thatthe waters might not transgress his command,when he marked out the foundations of theearth,30 then I was beside him, like a master worker;and I was daily his delight, rejoicing beforehim always,31 rejoicing in his inhabited world and delight-ing in the human race.

………………………………………………………9:1 Wisdom has built her house, she has hewnher seven pillars.2 She has slaughtered her animals, she hasmixed her wine, she has also set her table.3 She has sent out her servant-girls, she callsfrom the highest places in the town,4 ‘You that are simple, turn in here!’ To thosewithout sense she says,5 ‘Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wineI have mixed.6 Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk inthe way of insight.’

The poem falls within chapters 1-9 of thebook of Proverbs in which the Wisdom womansummons humankind to a life in harmony withcreation. In the poem Wisdom is presented asa woman, but she is no ordinary woman. Herexistence precedes the created world. Sheoriginated before the sea and mountains, be-fore the heavens and the sky. In Hebrew po-etic language, to exist before the created worldis in effect a claim to eternity.1 Thus in thebook of Daniel, when God is described in Ara-maic as the Ancient One, that does not meanthat we should picture God as very old, but aseternal, indeed as eternally young. WhenSophia claims in verses 23-30 of this poem tohave existed before the mountains and the seas,she too is the Ancient One.

In Prov 8:22 the Hebrew word qanani istranslated into our English translations of thebible as ‘created’ and so our texts read,‘Yahweh created me at the beginning of hiswork’. In Hebrew, however, the word qanani

can also mean ‘Yahweh brought me forth atthe beginning of his work’ or ‘Yahweh begotme’, or ‘formed me’, ‘acquired me’, or ‘pos-sessed’ me. In other words, the text is ambigu-ous about the origins of Sophia. Whether ornot she was created by Yahweh, she is not asother works of creation. She is brought forthbefore the world, i.e., she is pre-existent to it.Her existence at least coincides with Yahweh’sexistence as creator. That means that if God iseternally creator, then Sophia is eternally crea-tor.

In verses 24-26 the ancient world-view ofthe cosmos is indicated: thus the underworldis presented as the primeval ocean, the moun-tains are the pillars of the heavens and the foun-dation pillars of the earth. Sophia is broughtforth before the world. The divine passive, ‘Iwas brought forth’ evokes an image of her asYahweh’s daughter. Biblical scholars are notsure if the Hebrew word amon in verse 30should be translated as ‘artisan’ or ‘little child’.In our English translations we are told thatSophia was beside God as an artisan or mas-ter worker and thus she is presented as an ar-chitect of the created world. But if the word‘amon’ means little child, then the verse mayactually describe Wisdom as being beside Godlike a little child. The whole poem may be pre-senting Sophia as God’s beloved daughter,being brought forth from God and participat-ing with God in the creation of the world. Thepoem thus contains delightful imagery inwhich Sophia moves between the heavenlyrealm of a loving parent and the world of hu-mankind. She is daily God’s delight, and in

Marie Turner is alecturer in OldTestament at CatholicTheological Collegeand Flinders Universityof South Australia. Herresearch interestsinclude theologies ofcreation and thewisdom literature.

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turn, she delights in the human race. She is ina state of joyous play in God’s presence, re-joicing in God’s work of art, the world of hu-mankind.

In the next part of the poem we are toldthat Wisdom has built her house, prepared herbanquet, and sent out invitations to come andeat of her bread and wine. To do so is to findwisdom and insight. Her house with its sevenpillars is a cosmological image, again depict-ing the ancient view of the cosmos in whichthe pillars separate the waters above and be-low the earth, keeping the created world frombeing overwhelmed by the abyss and the heav-ens. This section of the poem, then, showsSophia as building and dwelling in hercosmological house and inviting all who wouldfind wisdom to come to her banquet.

When we think of creation texts of the Bi-ble we think first of the Genesis narratives,and yet, Proverbs 8-9 is one of the most beau-tiful of the creation texts. Sophia, beside Godat creation, spans the distance between Godand the world and human beings. She invitesus to eat of her bread and drink her wine andis so doing, to gain insight and indeed life it-self.

The Wisdom of Solomon: In Lovewith Sophia

The second poem that I want to explore comesfrom a deutero-canonical book, the Wisdomof Solomon. While the Wisdom of Solomonis not accepted as canonical by the Protestanttradition, which refers to it as apocryphal, it isaccepted as Sacred Scripture by Catholics andOrthodox and therefore the majority of theworld’s Christians. The poem is taken fromChapters 7:24-8:4 of the book and it reads:

24 For wisdom is more mobile than any mo-tion; because of her pureness she pervades andpenetrates all things.25 For she is a breath of the power of God, anda pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty;therefore nothing defiled gains entrance intoher.

26 For she is a reflection of eternal light, a spot-less mirror of the working of God, and an im-age of God’s goodness.27 Although she is but one, she can do all things,and while remaining in herself, she renews allthings; in every generation she passes into holysouls and makes them friends of God, andprophets;28 for God loves nothing so much as the personwho lives with wisdom.29 She is more beautiful than the sun, and ex-cels every constellation of the stars. Comparedwith the light she is found to be superior,30 for it is succeeded by the night, but againstwisdom evil does not prevail.8:1 She reaches mightily from one end of theearth to the other, and she orders all things well.

In this poem, Wisdom is described as abreath of the power of God, a pure emanationof the glory of the Almighty, a reflection ofeternal light, a spotless mirror of the workingof God, and an image of God’s goodness. Thedescription of Wisdom as a breath of God’spower reminds the reader of the breath of Godat creation, or the Christian reader of the HolySpirit. This similarity to the Holy Spirit is af-firmed in verse 25 where she emanates fromGod the Pantocrator, the Creator of all things,and while remaining in herself she dwells inholy souls, making them friends of God. Themention of Spirit, the language of remaining,and the reference to friends are echoed in theGospel of John in Jesus’ farewell address tothe disciples whom he calls friends, whom headjures to remain in him as he in them, and towhom he promises to send the Spirit who willdwell in them.

Sophia is described as an emanation ofGod’s glory. In the Old Testament, the word‘glory’ is used most frequently to indicate themajesty of God. Thus the ‘kabod Yahweh’, asthe Hebrew has it, the glory of God, rests onMount Sinai and it fills the Tent of Meetingand even Moses cannot enter. In the Old Tes-tament there is an idea that humankind cannotexperience the glory of the utterly transcend-ent God face to face and live. In Exodus 33Moses asks to be shown God’s glory. God


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promises to allow God’s goodness to pass be-fore Moses, but warns him that he cannot seeGod’s face, for to look on the face of God isto die. In the Wisdom poem, on the other hand,Sophia as the emanation of the glory of Godwho passes into holy souls, is able to mediatethe presence of God to humankind. Throughher, God’s glory is able to be experienced byhumankind and indeed all creation, for a laterpart of the poem tells us that God’s immortalspirit, that is, Sophia, is present in all things.

The use of the word ‘image’ for Sophia asthe image of God’s goodness reiterates thistheme of mediation between God and the cre-ated world. The Greek word used here forimage is ‘icon’. The Eastern and Orthodox tra-ditions of Christianity have a rich theology oficons as mediating the presence of God.Jaroslav Pelikan refers to the ‘intricate rela-tion between image and idea in philosophy andtheology, above all in Byzantine (or for thatmatter, Russian) philosophy and theology’.2

A more poetic description of the icon is ‘The-ology in Colour’.3 We may go one step fur-ther with Sophia as the perfect eikon of Godin that in her person as icon of God she medi-ates the reality that is God. The religious phi-losopher John Manoussakis explains the ab-solute necessity of the icon. He says that a Godwho lacks a face is impersonal. A God with-out a face is radical otherness and cannot beexperienced by humankind. He goes on toclaim that ‘an encounter with the divine with-out relation, that is, without some form oficonic representation, would not be differentin any way from an encounter with …utterdestruction’.4 As the experience of Moses re-minds us, there is a yearning within us to ex-perience God and yet at the same time we can-not look on the face of God and live. The de-scription of Sophia as icon of God speaks intothis theology of the utterly transcendent God.As icon of God, Sophia is the one who is ableto bridge the gap between the radical othernessof God and the world of humankind and allcreation.

In this poem from the Wisdom of Solomon

Sophia is identified as the teacher of philoso-phy, the arts and the sciences but she is not anintellectual abstraction. There is an eroticpower in Solomon’s address:

2 I loved her and sought her from my youth; Idesired to take her for my bride, and becameenamored of her beauty.3 She glorifies her noble birth by living withGod, and the Lord of all loves her.4 For she is an initiate in the knowledge of God,and an associate in God’s works.

The ambiguities in the text are notewor-thy. Solomon is depicted as a young man fall-ing in love with Sophia and seeking her forhis bride, the one to come home to at the endof the day. Yet in these lines she is also de-picted as bride of Yahweh, the one beloved ofGod, the one who shares the life and the knowl-edge of God and the one who works side byside with God. The Greek text uses the term‘symbiosis’ of her way of living with God. Shehas a symbiotic relationship with God, that is,she shares the very life of God and the knowl-edge of God. She is the one who works sideby side with God at creation. Indeed, the Greektext is more explicit. It tells us that she choosesthe works of God. The text is not clear whetherthis means she chooses to work with God orwhether she actually chooses what works Godwill do.

Wisdom 10:4 depicts Sophia as saviour.She is the one who delivered Adam from histransgression, she delivered Noah from theflood, and she rescued the Israelites throughthe miracle at the Sea. As the New Zealandscholar Alice Sinnott points out, this attribu-tion to Sophia of the central act of liberationin the Old Testament is astounding5 . As Sinnottsays,

This female personification of the creativeand saving power of God in the world is ac-tive and present in creation, all-knowing, all-powerful, omnipresent, renewing all things,working in history to save her chosen people,guiding and protecting them through theirstruggles and crises, and carrying out functionsattributed in other scripture texts to God. She

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can give instruction concerning ontology, cos-mology, physics, astronomy and biology, be-cause she was responsible for their creation(7:17-22) and she is responsible for the regu-lation and oversight of the cosmos (7:24; 8:1).6

What is clear from the poem is that Wis-dom is presented in divine categories and be-cause of her intimacy with God she is able tomediate relationship with the divine to Solo-mon and indeed to all of humankind.

Wisdom Revealing God

Apart from these two major poems, there areother texts from the biblical literature that thatspeak of Sophia in divine categories. In Sirach24 Sophia utters the following lines:

3 ‘I came forth from the mouth of the MostHigh, and covered the earth like a mist.4 I dwelt in the highest heavens, and my thronewas in a pillar of cloud.5 Alone I compassed the vault of heaven andtraversed the depths of the abyss.6 Over waves of the sea, over all the earth, andover every people and nation I have held sway.

There are several striking theological ele-ments in this poem. The first is that Sophiadescribes herself as coming forth from, ororiginating in, the most High God. The sec-ond striking element is that she speaks ofdwelling in the highest heavens, with herthrone in the pillar of cloud. In the book ofExodus the pillar of cloud is the imagery usedto describe God’s presence with the Israelitesduring their wanderings in the desert. Indeed,in the whole of the Old Testament, it is only inreference to God that the throne and the pillarof cloud are used in conjunction with eachother. As Sheppard reminds us, the combina-tion of these two images of throne and cloudand the assignment of them to Sophia canachieve the intended effect only when thereader is familiar with the sacred wildernesstraditions. Thus, certain familiar languageabout God in the Old Testament is here ap-plied to Sophia.7

The third striking element of the lines

quoted concerns the description of Sophia asalone encompassing the vault of heaven, andtreading the depths of the abyss. In Job 9:7 itis Yahweh who says, ‘I. ..alone stretched outthe heavens and trampled the waves of theSea’. The implication from these lines, then,is that Sophia is once again described in lan-guage and concepts appropriate to the divine.

Thus, in the lines quoted we are being pre-sented with feminine images of God as Wis-dom or Sophia. The nature of these texts aspoetry raises the issue of whether they can betaken as theological texts which are revelatoryof the nature of God. Do they simply portrayan attribute of God, namely God’s wisdom, inpoetic terms, or do they reveal God in God’srelationship to humankind and the cosmos?

First we must lay to rest the argument thatwisdom as feminine is simply the result ofgrammatical gender. In Greek the word forwisdom is Sophia, in Hebrew it is Hokmahand in Latin Sapientia, all of which have gram-matical feminine gender. English does not havefeminine grammatical gender for abstract con-cepts, but refers to them in the neuter gender.In English, then, the pronoun for wisdom asan attribute of the wise person would simplybe ‘it’ and not ‘she’.

Yet in all the wisdom poems where Wis-dom is depicted in divine categories, she isalmost invariably personified as a woman, al-beit no ordinary woman. There is no other at-tribute of God so consistently personified. AsRoland Murphy, the wisdom scholar tells us,‘literary personification is not rare in the bi-ble, but the case of Lady Wisdom is unique inits intensity and scope’.8 She is God’s wife,God’s daughter, God’s beloved, God’s co-crea-tor, God’s mediator to the created world. Ofcourse, these images are metaphorical, as allhuman language about God is metaphorical.We have no other way of speaking about God.Metaphor works best when a familiar concreteconcept, in this case woman, is used to get themessage across about the abstract concept, inthis case God’s wisdom. Poets and writerscommonly personify abstract concepts. Thus


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in Shakespeare we hear of jealousy as a green-eyed monster, and we speak of Old FatherTime and Jack Frost. In film, we may haveseen the movie, ‘Death Takes a Holiday’ or itsmore recent re-make, ‘Meet Joe Black’, inwhich Brad Pitt plays Death as a person, anattractive young man with whom the leadingfemale star falls in love and learns to trustDeath as a comforting presence. This personi-fication of Death stands in a long tradition inwhich Thanatos, the Greek term for Death, isdepicted in ancient sculptures as a beautifulyoung man.

Does the personification of Wisdom, theone who gives immortality, speak of somethingtheologically more profound than a literarydevice to describe an attribute of God? CanWisdom/Sophia be termed a hypostasis? Thisterm is a very complex one and is used inTrinitarian theology to try to speak of the mys-tery of the persons of the Trinity. In the con-text of the wisdom poems, biblical scholarsuse it to describe a metaphor that, as CeliaDeutsch defines it, acquires ‘the quality ofpersonal entity,… a kind of quasi-independ-ent existence’.9 Generally the word is takento mean a revelatory form of a deity. Sophiacan thus be described as revelatory of God.

Behind the figure of Sophia, scholars de-tect the influence of the Hellenistic GoddessIsis, or the Egyptian Ma’at or the CanaaniteAstarte. The sages may be extolling the praisesof Sophia to counteract Isis in particular andto encourage Jews in a Hellenistic world torecognize the richness and vitality of their owntradition. 10 Yet at no time do the sages of Is-rael compromise their monotheism, that is,their belief in the one God. At no time doesSophia become a separate figure detachedfrom God. When she reaches her full status asan independent personality, she is at the sametime most closely connected to God as the self-revelation of the divine, depicted in languageand categories that can only be applied to God.

The noted German scholar Gerhard vonRad broke new ground when he moved awayfrom the conventional view of scholars that

wisdom is merely a goddess substitute or apersonification of an attribute of God.11 In vonRad’s thesis Lady Wisdom, the voice of crea-tion speaking to humankind, is a bearer of rev-elation. As Wisdom, she is the self-revelationof God’s creation and signifies the mysteryimplanted there by God. For von Rad, this is areal, cosmological process, the bestowal ofsomething special on creation that now mys-teriously inhabits it. But she is also orientatedtowards humankind. She is the active influ-ence of the environment, the ordering powerthat affects and corrects us. Von Rad arguedthat the personification of this mysterious or-der was not merely a decorative, stylistic de-vice, but was actually determined by the sub-ject in question. This was because this prime-val order, indeed God’s glory reflected backfrom God, actually addresses humankind. Assuch, personification was the necessary modeof expression.

In more recent years Roland Murphy, theDominican biblical scholar, pressed von Rad’sthesis even further. In challenging von Rad’sidentification of wisdom with the order in crea-tion, Murphy argues that the very symbol ofthe wisdom woman, courted and eventuallymarried, precludes order as the correct corre-lation. Wisdom, because of her origins andauthority, is rather the revelation of God whocalls to humankind throughout the realm of thecreated world.

In a note of caution Claudia Camp suggeststhat women reject the androcentric view of themale sage desiring and possessing the WomanWisdom and instead speak of her as a sister oran intimate friend. 12

To conclude this section of my article, Iwould argue that the poetic texts in whichWisdom is depicted go far beyond a decora-tive stylistic device, as Von Rad reminded us.Nor is she an attribute of God, namely God’swisdom, implanted in creation. Rather, thetexts are revelatory of the mystery of God’srelationship with humankind in and throughthe created world, a relationship that is medi-ated by Sophia as feminine expression of God.

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I am not alone in this conviction. Contem-porary scholars such as Roland Murphy,Kathleen O’Connor, Elizabeth Johnson andDenis Edwards, stand in a long tradition ofwriters who have recognized in these textstheological truths which reveal to us the na-ture of God. Indeed, this tradition goes rightback to the New Testament itself.

Agent of Creation: Wisdom andthe New Testament

Since the texts of the New Testament whichhave been influenced by these wisdom writ-ings and by personified Sophia are too numer-ous and profound to deal with in this article, Iwill be selective. I will offer some generalcomments on the way the wisdom texts havebeen employed by the New Testament writersand will look in detail at two of them, namelythe Prologue to the Gospel of John and thePauline letter to the Colossians.

In the New Testament Jesus is presentedas the agent of the new creation, in languageand themes taken from the Old Testament wis-dom texts. Thus in the first letter to theCorinthians chapter 8:6 Paul states:

…for us there is one God, the Father, fromwhom are all things and for whom we exist,and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom areall things and through whom we exist.

In this text Paul is asserting that Jesus is thelord of all creation. Through Christ’s death andresurrection he embodies the creative powerof God.13 Sophia of the Old Testament andChrist of the New is the same divine power ofGod active in creation and salvation.

In the Letter to the Hebrews Chapter 1:2-3the connection with the wisdom of the OldTestament is made even more explicit. Thewriter tells us that God has spoken to us by aSon ‘whom he appointed heir of all things,through whom he also created the worlds. Heis the radiance of God’s glory and the exactimprint of God’s very being and he sustainsall things by his very word’. As James Dunnsays, ‘the passage is a striking expression of

Wisdom christology’. Hebrews uses the word‘radiance’ (hapaugasma in Greek) which is thesame word used of wisdom in the Wisdom ofSolomon 7:26 where it is said that Sophia isthe reflection of eternal light. This point be-comes significant when we realize that this isthe only usage of this word in the whole of theGreek translation of the Old Testament. It isvery likely then that the writer of Hebrews hadthis very text from the Wisdom of Solomon inmind when he or she speaks of Jesus in theseterms. In this text Christ is again the agent ofcreation, as Sophia is in the Old Testament.Thus both Sophia and Christ are agents of crea-tion, both are the radiance of God’s glory, andboth are pre-existent of creation.

Jesus as agent of creation, the one in whomand for whom all things exist, is the subject ofthe hymn to be found in Colossians 1:15-20.This is another of the hymns which scholarsgenerally term, wisdom-christological hymns.Scholars believe that these hymns were in cir-culation amongst the early Christians evenbefore Paul and the disciples who used hisname wrote their letters. Possibly the hymnswere sung or recited in Christian liturgicalcelebrations. These wisdom-christologicalhymns describe the risen Christ in terms takenfrom the Jewish wisdom writings.

The hymn reads:

1:15He is the image of the invisible God, thefirstborn of all creation; 16for in him all thingsin heaven and on earth were created, things vis-ible and invisible, whether thrones or domin-ions or rulers or powers—all things have beencreated through him and for him. 17 He himselfis before all things, and in him all things holdtogether. 18 He is the head of the body, thechurch; he is the beginning, the firstborn fromthe dead, so that he might come to have firstplace in everything. 19 For in him all the full-ness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 andthrough him God was pleased to reconcile tohimself all things, whether on earth or inheaven, by making peace through the blood ofhis cross.

The hymn is constructed in two sections.The first, verses 15-18a, deal with Christ’s pre-


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existent role in creation, and the second sec-tion, verses 18b-20 deal with his role in re-demption. Another way of expressing thethemes of the two sections would be to saythat the movement of the poem is from his rolein the old creation to his role in the new crea-tion. We do not know who the writer of thepoem was. It is possible it was Paul, but un-likely. Probably the writer was an unknownJewish Christian, who took various qualitiesof Sophia and applied them to Christ in hisrelation to the cosmos. In its original form thehymn probably envisaged a disruption in cos-mic harmony, and saw Christ as the divineagent in creation but now also the divine agentin reconciliation, restoring harmony to thecosmos.

The line that describes Christ as the imageof God is influenced by the wisdom literaturerather than the Genesis literature where Adamis the image of God. The word eikon is usedin conjunction with the phrase ‘the firstbornof creation’, taking us back to the Proverbstext where Sophia claimed that she was thefirst of Yahweh’s works. ‘Firstborn of crea-tion’ is used not to indicate temporal priority,but priority of rank and the guarantee of a fu-ture harvest, as it were. In Greek the word forfirstborn is prototokos. The word was em-ployed frequently in the Greek Old Testamentto indicate not simply temporal priority butsovereignty of rank. Thus Christ, as thefirstborn of creation, guarantees all future crea-tion and as the firstborn from the dead, he guar-antees the resurrection of all believers. Accord-ing to Col 1:15-16, therefore, Christ is sover-eign over creation, first within creation, andthe divine agent of creation. His role in re-demption is paralleled with the theme of crea-tion. The praise of Christ’s supremacy overthe church as his body matches the praise ofhis supremacy over the realm of creation.When Christ is called the beginning, the term‘firstborn from the dead’ signifies that it is hisposition in the new creation that is intended.He is to be pre-eminent in everything in thenew creation on account of his resurrection

from the dead. As the pre-existent agent ofcreation and the one in whom the fullness ofGod dwells, he spans the distance betweenGod and the world of humanity, just as Sophiaspans the distance between the creator and theworld of humankind. The Old TestamentSophia and the New Testament Christ are themanifestations of the divine in the world ofhumans.

While many more New Testament passagesare influenced by the wisdom literature, thefinal one I want to look at is the Prologue tothe Gospel of John.

The Prologue reads:

1:1 In the beginning was the Word, andthe Word was with God, and the Word wasGod. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3

All things came into being through him,and without him not one thing came intobeing. What has come into being 4 in himwas life, and the life was the light of allpeople. 5 The light shines in the darkness,and the darkness did not overcome it. 6

There was a man sent from God, whosename was John. 7 He came as a witness totestify to the light, so that all might believethrough him. 8 He himself was not the light,but he came to testify to the light. 9 Thetrue light, which enlightens everyone, wascoming into the world. 10 He was in theworld, and the world came into beingthrough him; yet the world did not knowhim. 11 He came to what was his own, andhis own people did not accept him. 12 Butto all who received him, who believed inhis name, he gave power to become chil-dren of God, 13 who were born, not of bloodor of the will of the flesh or of the will ofhumankind, but of God. 14 And the Wordbecame flesh and lived among us, and wehave seen his glory, the glory as of a fa-ther’s only son, full of grace and truth. 15

(John testified to him and cried out, ‘Thiswas he of whom I said, ‘He who comesafter me ranks ahead of me because he wasbefore me.’‘) 16 From his fullness we have

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all received, grace upon grace. 17 The lawindeed was given through Moses; graceand truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 Noone has ever seen God. It is God the onlySon, who is close to the Father’s heart, whohas made him known.

In the fourth Gospel the masculine Greekterm logos, meaning the word, has replacedthe feminine term, wisdom, or Sophia. In theancient world the Logos was considered to bethe principle of reason pervading the entirecosmos and it was thought of as a male princi-ple. Yet, while wisdom became subsumed intothe Logos, the self-same categories used ofSophia are applied to Christ. One reason forthe masculine logos is to fit the male histori-cal Jesus, although there is no sound theologi-cal reason for doing so. The concept of wis-dom is a theological one and need not havebeen shifted to suit the historical male Jesus.At the same time, however, the Gospel writeruses categories of wisdom even as he speaksof Jesus as the logos, that is, the word.

Thus in the Prologue Jesus comes forthfrom God and all things came into beingthrough him. We have seen that this is Sophia’srole in Proverbs. In Baruch, Israel is warnedto walk towards the shining of Sophia’s light,or she will be given to the Gentiles. In the Pro-logue Jesus is described as the light who hascome into the world, but is rejected by his ownpeople. He is described as having tentedamong his own. In Sirach, the Creator com-mands Sophia to pitch her tent among the peo-ple of Israel. In the Prologue to John Jesus isdescribed as the one who has the Father’s gloryand makes it manifest to human beings. In theWisdom of Solomon it is Sophia who is a pureemanation of the glory of God. As RaymondBrown, the noted Johannine scholar, says,

In the Old Testament presentation of Wisdom,there are good parallels for almost every detailof the Prologue’s description of theWord…Jesus is divine Wisdom, pre-existent,but now come among [people] to teach themand give them life.14

The wisdom themes continue in the rest of

the Gospel. In the Old Testament Sophia isthe one who teaches people of the things thatare above, she utters truth, she gives instruc-tions as to what pleases God, and she leadspeople to life and immortality. In the FourthGospel these are the functions of Jesus as theone who reveals the Father, the one who is theway, the truth and the life. Sophia uses sym-bols of bread, water and wine, and invites peo-ple to eat and drink. Jesus uses these symbolsfor his revelation, but those who eat and drinkof Sophia’s bread and wine hunger and thirstfor more, whereas those who partake of Jesus’food and drink never hunger or thirst again.Sophia’s disciples are referred to as her chil-dren or her friends. In John’s gospel the disci-ples of Jesus are called his children or hisfriends.

While ‘word of God’ is the preferred termfor Jesus in John’s Gospel, it need not con-tinue to carry its ancient masculine overtones.There is a connection between word and wis-dom made also in the wisdom literature. In theWisdom of Solomon 9:1-4 Solomon addressesGod thus:

O God…who..made all things by your wordAnd by your wisdom ..formed humankind,

…………………………………………..Give me the wisdom who sits by your throne.

It is the nature of biblical poetry that thefirst line is synonymous with the second line.Thus in these two lines ‘wisdom’ and ‘word’are equated. It is through God’s word or wis-dom that all things are created. Again in Sirach24 wisdom tells us that she ‘came forth fromthe mouth of the most high’, imagery thatevokes the concept of ‘word’. By the usage ofboth terms, word and wisdom, in parallelism,the gender borders disintegrate or deconstruct.

There are numerous other places in theNew Testament where Jesus is equated withWisdom. He is couched in wisdom terms inparticular in Romans, Corinthians and theGospel of Matthew, but the examples are toonumerous to deal with here. Enough has beensaid to show that when the New Testamentwriters sought categories to describe the eter-


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nal word of God become incarnate on earth inthe person of Jesus, they found appropriatecategories in Sophia. In conclusion therefore,I would now like to draw out the significanceof the wisdom texts I have been dealing withand sum up the way in which God is presentedas Wisdom, both in the New and Old Testa-ments.

Conclusion

In the great wisdom poems I have explored,Sophia is much more than a simple literarypersonification of an attribute of God. AsElizabeth Johnson says,

Sophia is a female personification of God’s ownbeing in creative and saving involvement withthe world. The chief reason for arriving at thisinterpretation is the functional equivalence be-tween the deeds of Sophia and those of the bib-lical God. What she does is already portrayedelsewhere in the Scriptures as the field of ac-tion of Israel’s God under the revered, unpro-nounceable name (YHWH), Adonai, the Lord.15

What, then, do the personification texts tellus about the nature of God and why is specifi-cally the personification of God’s wisdom thatis revelatory?

First, they can call our attention to the ex-istence of a significant body of biblical textswhich depict God in female imagery. Thesetexts are not small isolated verses but wholechapters of biblical books and indeed completebooks of the bible. To ignore these books andconceive of God in solely male imagery is tan-tamount to denying an important aspect of therevelation of the nature of the divine. Thesetexts from the ancient world offer us feminineimagery of God which is not confined to moth-ering and nurturing roles. Sophia is creator,saviour, scientist, organizer, and philosopher.The breadth of her descriptions means that wehave access to a body of sacred texts whichpresent God in female imagery that is notstereo-typical, but traverses gender barriers.

Second, it seems to me that the question ofwhy it is specifically God’s wisdom that is

personified and revelatory is tied to the con-nection the texts have with creation theology.Von Rad was not wrong in his connection withwisdom and the order in creation, although hedid not go far enough. It is specifically wis-dom that is personified because it is in therealm of the created world that God’s wisdomis at work and is to be made known to human-kind. In the English translations of John’sGospel we are told that the Word came to whatwas his own and his own people did not ac-cept him. In Greek the text indicates that theWord came to his own home. We often talk ofthe word made flesh and think rightly in termsof the second person of the Trinity becomingincarnate and thereby taking on board all thatmakes us human, yet how often do we think ofthe world as a place where God feels at homeprecisely because it has been made by God?

Often these personification texts come inthe deutero-canonical literature. Not all Chris-tian traditions include these books in theircanon of Scripture and those that do oftenmarginalize these texts through neglect. It isin these books, and in particular in the Wis-dom of Solomon, that the feminine image ofGod, Sophia, is most clearly expressed. Thebooks are revelatory of the nature of God butalso of the nature of all creation as the homeof God. It is vital that the books take a centralplace in our consciousness if we are not to losesight of what they tell us of the nature of Godand the world.

My final point is that it is appropriate thatpoetry, the highest form of language, shouldbe the vehicle for the texts about Sophia.Through the poems Sophia calls for a responsefrom those she addresses. To answer her callis to answer the invitation of the God she re-veals. Later Christian writers, in the light ofJesus Christ, drew theological implicationsfrom these texts that were at one and the sametime cognizant of her divine status and yet for-getful or even contemptuous of the feminineimagery. As such, they replaced her with theLogos, male principle of reason. Because ofthe equivalence made in the wisdom literature

GOD AS WISDOM


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COMPASS

between word and wisdom, both terms can beread inclusively.

There is an ambiguity in the Sophia textswhich means that she stands up to no clear-cutdefinition. Perhaps that is why she comes tous in poetry. At times she refers to God as hercreator, at other times she is begotten of Godand yet again she is present with God at crea-tion. There are texts where she is to be foundby those who seek her and in other texts, suchas Job 28, only God knows the way to her.She dwells in the highest heavens, yet shepitches her tent in Israel. When all the textsare explored, our analysis completed and our

1. Kathleen O’Connor, ‘The Invitation of WisdomWoman’, The Bible Today, (29:1991):87-93, 892. Jaroslav Pelikan , Imago Dei. The ByzantineApologia for Icons. New Haven and London: YaleUniversity Press, 1990, 33. Richard Temple, Icons. Divine Beauty, London:SAQI, 2004, 114. John Manoussakis, ‘The Revelation Accordingto Jacques Derrida’, in Derrida and Religion. OtherTestaments, Ed. Yvonne Sherwood and Kevin Hart,New York, Routledge, 2005, 3185. Alice Sinnott, ‘Wisdom as Saviour’, AustralianBiblical Review, (54:2004), 19-31, 206. Ibid, 247. Gerald T. Sheppard, Wisdom as a Hermeneuti-cal Construct. A Study in the Sapientalizing of theOld Testament. Berlin and New York: Walter deGruyter, 1980, 32-338. Roland E. Murphy, ‘Introduction to Wisdom Lit-erature,’ in The New Jerome Biblical Commentary,edited by Joseph A. Fitmyer and Roland E. Murphy

theology articulated, the mystery of God isnever exhausted and Sophia remains elusive.Solomon desired that when he entered hishouse he would find rest and companionshipwith Sophia. While a beautiful and appealingimage, it is a stereo-typical one of the womanwaiting at home for the man to return. A moreappropriate image I would like to leave youwith is one of the God, not domesticated inthe home of the wise King Solomon, but theGod who is the artist, the philosopher and thescientist and who delights in each one of usand in her work of creation as she reachesmightily from one end of the earth to the other.

Raymond E. Brown, 447-52. London: GeoffreyChapman, 1989, 4509. Celia M. Deutsch, Lady Wisdom, Jesus and theSages, Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, Trinity PressInternational, 1996, 2010. Sinnott, 3011. Gerhard von Rad, Wisdom in Israel, trans.James D. Martin (London: SCM, 1972), 14412. Claudia Camp, ‘Woman Wisdom as Root Meta-phor,’ in The Listening Heart. Essays in Wisdomand the Psalms in Honor of Roland E. Murphy, O.Carm., edited by Kenneth G. Hoglund, Elizabeth F.Huwiler, Jonathan T. Glass and Roger W. Lee, 45-76, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1987, 6313. James D. G. Dunn, Christology in the Making,SCM Press, 1980, 18214. Raymond Brown, The Gospel According toJohn, The Anchor Bible Series, Vol 1,523-24.15. Elizabeth A. Johnson, She Who Is. The Mys-tery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse.New York, Crossroad, 1992, 91.

NOTES


proverbios

Documents