1. Introduction
Jewish writings from the Hellenistic and early Roman imperial periods offer a diversity of perspectives on a host of intersecting social, cultural and theological issues. One particularly well documented area of Hellenistic and Roman Judaism is apocalypticism, especially apocalyptic eschatology. Jewish literature in the period, both ‘apocalypses’ and other writings, discloses and vividly describes the final judgement and the fate of humanity and the cosmos, often in order to exhort groups to a way of life pleasing to God. One of the most prominent reconstructions of Jewish apocalyptic eschatology, especially in New Testament scholarship, is that of Martinus C. de Boer. According to one recent assessment, de Boer ‘has done as much as anybody to establish a religionsgeschichtlich foundation for understanding Paul as an apocalyptic theologian’.Footnote 1
In publications as early as 1988 and as recent as 2020,Footnote 2 de Boer has proposed a taxonomy of two ‘tracks’ of apocalyptic eschatology in late Second Temple Judaism. On the one hand, there was ‘cosmological apocalyptic eschatology’, in which God was fundamentally conceived of as a warrior and liberator and the eschatological scene as a battlefield. For de Boer, this is best represented by the Book of the Watchers (1 En. 1–36). He writes: ‘This form of Jewish apocalyptic eschatology … appears to involve “a cosmic drama in which divine and cosmic forces are at work”’.Footnote 3 On the other hand, there was ‘forensic apocalyptic eschatology’, in which God was conceived of as a judge and the scene was ‘conceptualized not as a cosmic war but as a courtroom in which humanity appears before the bar of the judge’.Footnote 4 According to de Boer, this is best represented by the post-70 apocalypses 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch. De Boer's distinction has been very influential,Footnote 5 but I argue that it fails to account for the full variety of Jewish apocalyptic eschatology in the Hellenistic and Roman periods.Footnote 6
In this article I contend that Wisdom of Solomon, a Jewish-Greek text from the late Hellenistic or early Roman imperial period (ca 1st cent. BCE/CE) that ‘provides our clearest and most explicit example of the “‘Eschatologisierung der Weisheit”’ posited by von Rad’,Footnote 7 complicates de Boer's typology of two ‘tracks’ of Jewish apocalyptic eschatology.Footnote 8 Wisdom, which Paul perhaps knew and drew on in his letters,Footnote 9 entails both ‘forensic’ depictions of an eschatological courtroom (5.1–14) and ‘cosmological’ depictions of cosmic war (5.15–23). Yet the presence of (what appear to be) both ‘tracks’ is not the central problem Wisdom poses to de Boer's framework, since he recognises that certain texts exhibit both.Footnote 10 Rather, the problem is that Wisdom presupposes and propounds a cosmology fundamentally incompatible with the cosmology presumed in de Boer's ‘cosmological apocalyptic eschatology’.Footnote 11 In de Boer's account, cosmological eschatology construes divine warfare and cosmic battle as God's invasion to defeat hostile superhuman forces of evil.Footnote 12 Instead of envisioning eschatological justice as the result of a divine invasion, however, Wisdom envisions it as the result of divine pervasion.Footnote 13 That is, cosmological eschatology in Wisdom entails a fully functioning, divinely pervaded cosmos operating as it was intended to operate. To make my case, I provide a close reading of the final chapter of Wisdom's so-called ‘Book of Eschatology’ and attend to its wider Jewish and Hellenistic philosophical contexts.Footnote 14
2. ‘Forensic Apocalyptic Eschatology’ in Wis 5.1–14
I begin with (what de Boer refers to as) ‘forensic apocalyptic eschatology’. In Wis 5.1–14, the author narrates the vindication, exaltation and acclamation of the formerly oppressed righteous one. The scene is set in 5.1: ‘Then the righteous one (ὁ δίκαιος) will stand with great confidence in the presence of those who have oppressed him and those who make light of his labours.’Footnote 15 Here, the righteous one's ‘standing’ clearly evokes a judicial scene, much like the manner in which עמד is deployed in judicial scenes in the Jewish scriptures.Footnote 16 The background of 5.1 is found earlier in 2.10–20. There, we learn that the impious are not simply hedonistic; they are also oppressive. Thus, they conspired among themselves, ‘Let us lie in wait for the righteous man (τὸν δίκαιον), because he is inconvenient to us and opposes our actions; he reproaches us for sins against the law, and accuses us of sins against our paideia. He professes to have knowledge of God, and calls himself a παῖς κυρίου’ (2.12–13).Footnote 17
The definitive study on the Gattung of Wisdom 5.1–14 is still George Nickelsburg's dissertation.Footnote 18 He systematically demonstrated that the passage is influenced and shaped by the language and structure of the fourth servant song of Isaiah (Isa 52.13–53.12). The Isaianic influence on Wis 5.1–14 can be seen in common language and themes such as the righteous one as the παῖς κυρίου, MT-Isaiah's עבד יהוה; the suffering righteous one as ‘grievous to behold’ (Wis 2.15; Isa 52.14 and 53.2); and the misunderstanding of his (seeming) death (Wis 3.2b and 5.4; Isa 53.4b).Footnote 19 The four primary structural similarities are the exaltation of the righteous one (Wis 5.1a; Isa 52.13), the reference back to his former state (Wis 5.1bc; Isa 52.14), and the amazed reaction and remorseful confession of those who afflicted him (Wis 5.2–8; Isa 52.15 and 53.1–6).
To accomplish a full vindication of the righteous and condemnation of the wicked, Wisdom depicts the post-mortem reversal as bringing about an epiphanic realisation among the wicked – yet one that leads to condemnation, not forgiveness.Footnote 20 The wicked eloquently express remorse in an ode to their ephemeral existence. The poetic woe is worth quoting at length:
All those things have vanished like a shadow, and like a rumour that passes by; like a ship that sails through the billowy water, and when it has passed no trace can be found, no track of its keel in the waves; or as, when a bird flies through the air, no evidence of its passage is found; the light air, lashed by the beat of its pinions and pierced by the force of its rushing flight, is traversed by the movement of its wings, and afterward no sign of its coming is found there; or as, when an arrow is shot at a target, the air, thus divided, comes together at once, so that no one knows its pathway. So we also, as soon as we were born, ceased to be, and we had no sign of virtue to show, but were consumed in our wickedness. (Wis 5.9–13)
The author argues that just as the wicked reasoned, so also will they be punished – that is, as a vanishing shadow, a ship that passes by without a trace. This is what they realise about themselves, but what is it that they realise about the righteous?
The wicked now see that the righteous one has been ‘reckoned among the sons of God’ (κατελογίσθη ἐν υἱοῖς θεοῦ) and that ‘his lot is among the holy ones’ (ἐν ἁγίοις ὁ κλῆρος αὐτοῦ, Wis 5.5). These two statements, which recognise the exalted existence of the righteous in the heavens with the angels, are at home in Jewish traditions. The most relevant comparanda come from Qumran, particularly the Hodayot. Thus, in 1QH 11.20–4, the hymnist exclaims:Footnote 21
I thank you, Lord, that you have redeemed my life from the pit, and that from Sheol-Abaddon you have lifted me up to an eternal height (רום עולם), so that I walk about on a limitless plain. I know that there is hope for one whom you have formed from the dust for an eternal council (סוד עולם). And a perverted spirit you have purified from great sin that it might take its place with the host of the holy ones (צבא קדושים) and enter into community with the congregation of the children of heaven (ביחד עם עדת בני שמים). And you cast for the man an eternal lot (גורל עולם) with the spirits of knowledge (רוחות דעת), that he might praise your name in a common rejoicing (יחד רנה) and recount your wonderful acts before all your works.
Similarly, in 1QH 19.13–17, the hymnist extolls God:
For the sake of your glory you have purified a mortal from sin so that he may sanctify himself for you from all impure abominations and from faithless guilt, so that he might be united with the children of your truth and in the lot with your holy ones (בגורל עם קדושיכה), so that a corpse-infesting maggot might be raised up from the dust to the council of [your] t[ruth], and from a spirit of perversion to the understanding which comes from you, and so that he may take (his) place before you with the everlasting host and the [eternal] spirit[s] (ולהתיצב במעמד לפניכה עם צבא עד ורוחות עולם), and so that he may be renewed together with all that is and will be and with those who have knowledge in a common rejoicing (יחד רנה).Footnote 22
Both hymns provide a window into a quintessential aspect of self-understanding in the Hodayot. Upon entering the new covenantal community,Footnote 23 the individual had been raised to the eternal heights (רום עולם), granted fellowship with the angels (whether referred to as ‘holy ones’, קדושים; ‘children of heaven’, בני שמים; ‘children of God’, בני אל; ‘spirits of knowledge’, רוחות דעת; or ‘eternal spirits’, רוחות עולם) and given the heavenly and eternal ‘lot’ (גורל). Drawing on the rich reservoir of ancient near eastern mythology as inflected in the Jewish scriptures, community members understood themselves as having access to the divine ‘council’ (סוד) and ‘assembly’ (עדה).Footnote 24 Similarly, according to the maskil hymn that concludes the Community Rule, God has permitted the elect ‘to inherit the lot of the holy ones’ (וינחילם בגורל קדושים), joining ‘their assembly with the children of heaven’ (בני שמים). The maskil claims that God has done so ‘for the council of the community’ (לעצת יחד, 1QS 11.7–8) by which he perhaps means that the community's identity as the yaḥad – that is, the ‘unity’ – is founded upon their fellowship with the heavenly community of angels, hence יחד רנה (‘common rejoicing’) in 1QH 11.24 and 19.17.Footnote 25
The cluster of convictions in 1QH 11.20–4, 1QH 19.13–17 and 1QS 11.7–8 constitutes the very things which apocalyptically inclined Jews hoped to receive in the eschatological age, whether understood in the framework of (physical or spiritual) resurrection or another form of spiritual existence.Footnote 26 The final phrase of Daniel captures this nicely: such Jews looked ahead ‘for [their] inheritance at the end of days’, גורל לקץ הימין, or, in Greek, κλῆρόν εἰς συντέλειαν ἡμερῶν (Dan 12.13 (MT and OG)). This includes our Solomonic sage, albeit with a different understanding of ‘inheritance’.Footnote 27 Indeed, if the Hodayot were written in Greek, the core aspect of the hymnist's exclamation of praise – namely, his fellowship with the angels and his eternal lot – would read virtually identically to what the wicked realise has happened to the righteous one in Wis 5.5: that he has been ‘reckoned among the sons of God’ (κατελογίσθη (נחשבו) ἐν υἱοῖς θεοῦ (בני אל)) and that ‘his lot is among the holy ones’ (ἐν ἁγίοις (קדושים) ὁ κλῆρος αὐτοῦ (גורל)).Footnote 28 There is no definitive trace of resurrection in Wisdom, but resurrection was by no means the only form of post-mortem existence that Jews of the late Second Temple period envisaged.Footnote 29 The realisation of the wicked in Wisdom 5 that the righteous live on with the angels attests to the book's participation in Jewish apocalyptic traditions of the Hellenistic and early Roman imperial periods. Yet this is not the last word. Thus far in Wisdom 5, the author has focused on the righteous individual's exaltation and vindication; that is, the focus has been personal and forensic. The remainder of Wisdom 5, to which we now turn, marks a sudden and unexpected shift.
3. ‘Cosmological Apocalyptic Eschatology’ in Wis 5.15–23
After narrating the vindication, exaltation and acclamation of the righteous one (ὁ δίκαιος) in the presence of the impious (οἱ ἀσεβεῖς), Wis 5.15 marks a shift to the immortal fate of righteous ones (δίκαιοι): ‘the righteous ones live forever, and their reward is worth the Lord; the Most High takes care of them’. Nevertheless, the shift from the vindication and exaltation of the righteous individual in the singular to the post-mortem fate of the righteous ones in the plural is part of a broader and perhaps more significant shift: while the post-mortem and eschatological images until this point have been personal and forensic, in what follows they are cosmic. Wis 5.15–23 moves beyond 5.1–14's version of ‘forensic apocalyptic eschatology’ to its version of ‘cosmological apocalyptic eschatology’. Grappling with afterlife and eschatology in Wisdom's ‘Book of Eschatology’ thus requires grappling with both personal-forensic and global-cosmological dimensions.Footnote 30
Whereas the prophetic background of second-Isaiah's fourth servant song provides the key structure and themes of Wis 5.1–14, the mythological background of third-Isaiah's depiction of Yahweh as a divine warrior provides the central imagery of Wis 5.17–23.Footnote 31 Compare, for instance, Isa 59.16b–19 with Wis 5.16b–23a:
[The Lord] defended them with his own arm, and with his compassion he upheld them. And he put on righteousness like a breastplate and placed a helmet of salvation on his head, and he clothed himself with a garment of vengeance and with his cloak, as one about to render retribution, reproach to his adversaries. And those from the west shall fear the name of the Lord, and those from the rising of the sun, his glorious name, for anger will come from the Lord like a rushing river – it will come with wrath. (Isa 59.16b–19, NETS)
With his right hand [the Lord] will cover them, and with his arm he will shield them. He will take his zeal as his whole armour, and will weaponise all creation to repel his enemies; he will put on righteousness as a breastplate, and wear impartial justice as a helmet; he will take holiness as an invincible shield, and sharpen stern wrath for a sword, and the cosmos will join with him to fight against his frenzied foes. Shafts of lightning will fly with true aim, and will leap from the clouds to the target, as from a well-drawn bow, and hailstones full of wrath will be hurled as from a catapult; the water of the sea will rage against them, and rivers will relentlessly overwhelm them; a mighty wind will rise against them, and like a tempest it will winnow them away. (Wis 5.16b–23a)
Noting the passage's indebtedness to Isaiah 59, Moyna McGlynn describes Wis 5.16b–23 as ‘formulaic’.Footnote 32 That Wis 5.16b–23 reflects on and appropriates Isaiah 59 is undeniable; a tally of common elements is hardly necessary. Even the elements of the passage that cannot be traced back to Isaiah 59 parallel other predictions of cosmic forces being weaponised by the divine warrior against the wicked in the prophetic corpus. For instance, the lightning of 5.21 resonates with Zech 9.14 (‘Then the Lord will appear over them, and his arrow will go forth like lightning’), and the hail of 5.22 resonates with Isa 28.2 (‘the Lord has one who is mighty and strong; like a storm of hail, a destroying tempest, like a storm of mighty, overflowing waters’). The depiction of the Lord ‘covering’ (σκεπάσει) the righteous resonates with Zephaniah's claim that those who seek the Lord and do justice will ‘be covered (σκεπασθῆτε) on the day of the Lord's wrath’ (Zeph 2.3). The point is not to determine a specific allusion for each element, but rather to show that the imagery is allusive.Footnote 33 All of this supports McGlynn's claim that Wis 5.16b–23 draws on traditional imagery.Footnote 34
Nevertheless, taken as a whole, Wisdom's depiction is distinctive in comparison with the other scriptural sources. To refer to it as ‘formulaic’ may not be incorrect, but this does not provide the whole picture. Most importantly, Wisdom presumes a Hellenistic philosophical conception of a cosmos, something lacking from the scriptural traditions to which it alludes. Indeed, Wisdom's major departure from Isaiah 59 is indicative of its innovation: in contrast to divine warrior traditions such as Isaiah 59 and other episodes such as the stars fighting from heaven in Judg 5.20 and the sun standing still in Josh 10.12, which are ‘understood as miraculous departure[s] from the normal workings of nature’, in Wisdom ‘creation itself is programmed to ensure the implementation of justice’.Footnote 35 To appreciate Wisdom's innovative departure, it is necessary to consider the manner in which creation qua cosmos functions as a divine instrument in Wisdom.Footnote 36
In addition to the cosmological eschatology of our passage, the divine instrumentality of creation is paradigmatically seen in the final chapter, itself the conclusion of the book as a whole and of the so-called ‘Book of History’ (Wis 11–19).Footnote 37 Explaining the miraculous event of the crossing of the Red Sea, the author begins by writing: ‘the whole creation in its nature was fashioned anew (ἐν ἰδίῳ γένει πάλιν ἄνωθεν διετυποῦτο), complying with your commands, so that your children might be kept unharmed’ (Wis 19.6). This statement is reiterated towards the end of the section: ‘for the elements were transposed into other elements (τὰ στοιχεῖα μεθαρμοζόμενα)’.Footnote 38 Wisdom makes a similar point regarding the Egyptian experience of thunderstorms and God's own people's gift of manna: ‘for creation is subject to you who made it: it tenses (ἐπιτείνεται) for punishment against the unjust and relaxes (ἀνίεται) for the benefit on behalf of those who trust in you’ (Wis 16.24). Philo makes a parallel interpretive move (see especially the transposition of the elements in Wis 19.18) when explaining the miracle of manna. He writes:
For just as [God] summoned up the most perfect work, the cosmos, into being from not being, in the same way [God summoned up] abundance in the wilderness having converted the elements (μεταβαλὼν τὰ στοιχεῖα) to address the urgency of the need, so that, instead of the earth, the air produced food as nourishment without labour or hard work for those who had no recourse for the time to provide what was necessary.Footnote 39
Like Philo, Wisdom appropriates a Stoic notion of cosmic ‘tension’ and ‘relaxation’ in order to explain what seems miraculous.Footnote 40 Phillip Horky describes the Stoic notion of ‘tension’ as ‘the means by which diverse objects are able to interact successfully’. The primary ‘diverse objects’ are indeed the cosmic elements (τὰ στοιχεῖα). As such, ‘tension’ and ‘relaxation’ are ‘fundamental … for the sustenance of the universe as an orderly composition of divine and mortal elements that belong in it’.Footnote 41 In Stoic cosmological theory, ‘tension’ is itself accomplished by all-pervading pneuma, that which guarantees the cosmos’ rational functioning as a coherent whole.Footnote 42
Unlike the ancient Near Eastern divine warrior traditions that the author adapts for eschatological purposes in Wis 5, Wisdom is founded upon a conception of the cosmos as a providentially ordered and divinely pervaded whole of diverse parts that is conducive to life. As in Stoicism, in Wisdom the cohering and life-giving nature of the cosmos is guaranteed by God permeating it via divine pneuma (or sophia, since sophia is a philanthrōpon pneuma) (Wis 1.5–7). Thus in the opening chapter of Wisdom the author describes the divine pneuma as that which ‘holds all things together’ (τὸ συνέχον τὰ πάντα) and has ‘filled the world’ (πεπλήρωκεν τὴν οἰκουμένην, Wis 1.7).Footnote 43 Compare this with Galen's description of Stoic pneumatics: ‘The chief proponents of the sustaining power (συνεκτικὴ δύναμιν), such as the Stoics, make what sustains one thing, and what is sustained something different: the pneumatic substance is what sustains (πνευματικὴ οὐσία τὸ συνέχον), and the material substance what is sustained (ὑλικὴ τὸ συνέχομενον). And they say that air and fire sustain, and earth and water are sustained.’Footnote 44 Further, in Wis 8.1 sophia ‘stretches strongly from boundary to boundary (διατείνει δὲ ἀπὸ πέρατος ἐπὶ πέρας εὐρώστως) and orders all things well’.Footnote 45 According to Alcinous, the second-century ce Middle-Platonist philosopher, the world-soul pervades the cosmos, ‘stretching from the centre to the outer limits’ (ταθείσης ἐκ τοῦ μέσου ἐπὶ τὰ πέρατα) and ‘binding it together’ (συνδεῖν).Footnote 46 Philo uses virtually the same language in describing the logos – whom he frequently identifies with sophia Footnote 47 – as the ‘unbreakable bond’ (δεσμὸν ἄρρηκτον) of the cosmos: ‘The logos stretches himself from the middle to the outer limits and from the peaks back to the middle’ (ἀπὸ τῶν μέσων ἐπὶ τὰ πέρατα καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν ἄκρων ἐπὶ τὰ μέσα ταθείς, Plant. 9).Footnote 48 In making this claim, Philo draws on the Timaeus’ description of the soul of the world, using both τείνω and συνάγω drawn from Tim. 34b3–4 and 36e2, and he probably also has the Stoic notion of ‘tension’ in view.Footnote 49 Although there is no reason to postulate that Wisdom alludes to the Timaeus in Wis 8.1, the author makes a claim similar to Philo and Alcinous and participates in this broader philosophical milieu.Footnote 50 These examples go to show that in the world-view of Wisdom, the cosmos is a self-consisting, rational, divinely pervaded (by pneuma) whole consisting of well-ordered parts.Footnote 51 The mythological idiom of apocalyptic eschatology in Wisdom is fitted to this cosmology.
In this light, the cosmic eschatology of Wis 5.16–23 should not simply be interpreted as ‘formulaic’. Of course, insofar as Wisdom draws on traditional imagery for its eschatology, it is in part formulaic. But this is not the whole of it; indeed, this is not the most important part of it. Far more important is the function and framework of Wisdom's appropriation of Israel's divine warrior traditions. By adopting this tradition and reapplying it to the divinely ordered cosmos, Wisdom transforms the tradition into a cosmological eschatology and a defence of a Hellenistic philosophical notion of the cosmos.Footnote 52 Indeed, the cosmological eschatology of Wis 5.17–23 can be read as a vivid defence of the cosmological conviction of Wis 1.14 that the ‘the generations of the cosmos are salvific’ (σωτήριοι αἱ γενέσεις τοῦ κόσμου), with the cosmos dispensing justice.Footnote 53 Seneca describes humans as ‘allies’ of creation, which is itself divine,Footnote 54 and it could be equally well said that Wisdom describes the divinely pervaded cosmos as an ally of virtuous humanity.
Further, the weaponisation of creation is a fulfilment of the principle espoused in Wis 11.16, namely that one ‘is punished by the very things by which one sins’. In the preceding portions of Wis 3–4 and 5.1–14, the wicked are punished in the manner in which they reasoned – that is, with ephemeral existence. In Wis 5.15–23 they are punished by creation because their life was an abuse of creation. Thus, the hedonistic pledge of the wicked in Wis 2.6, ‘let us make use of creation (χρησώμεθα τῇ κτίσει) to the full as in youth’, leads to the eschatological judgement upon the wicked in Wis 5.17, ‘the Lord will weaponise creation (ὁπλοποιήσει τὴν κτίσιν) for vengeance against his enemies’. The cosmos is an eschatological divine instrument of judgement against those who hedonistically abuse it. The claim of the wicked in 2.2 that ‘we shall be as though we had never been, for the breath (πνοή) in our nostrils is smoke’ leads to the cosmic-pneumatic judgement of Wis 5.23, ‘a mighty pneuma will rise against them’. Attempts to determine whether pneuma is better understood as ‘spirit’ or ‘wind’ miss the point:Footnote 55 the author is playing on both senses in a highly poetic and mythological idiom to depict the punishment of the wicked as a fulfilment of their wrong reasoning and the well-ordered plan of the cosmos. When interpreted in the context of the book as a whole, Wis 5.16–23 entails a philosophical innovation within Jewish apocalyptic traditions – one that has not been adequately accounted for in reconstructions of Jewish apocalyptic eschatology.
4. Conclusion
A full account of cosmological eschatology in the Hellenistic and early Roman imperial periods needs to include the evidence of Wisdom. As I have argued, de Boer's influential typology of two ‘tracks’ of Jewish apocalyptic eschatology is unable to account for Wisdom’s creative appropriation of Hellenistic philosophical cosmology. Rather than predicating cosmic justice on an extra-cosmic divine invasion, Wisdom emphasises intra-cosmic divine pervasion – a cosmos operating as it was intended to operate – as the means by which justice is secured. While the imagery and allusions of Wisdom's personal-forensic (5.1–14) and global-cosmological (5.15–23) eschatology derive from ancient Near Eastern mythology as inflected in the prophetic corpus of the Jewish scriptures (especially second-Isaiah's fourth servant song and third-Isaiah's depiction of the divine warrior), the latter functions as a defence of a characteristically Hellenistic philosophical notion of the cosmos. Wisdom innovates within Jewish apocalyptic tradition by employing the mythological idiom of apocalypticism to defend the philosophical claim that the cosmos is just and facilitates life for those who are likewise just.Footnote 56 In short, Wisdom refashions cosmological eschatology into a defence of the justice of the cosmos.
