Stating the Obvious, With Some Help From Grace, by Dr. Jeff Mirus

By Dr. Jeff Mirus, Catholic Culture, Nov. 12, 2021

Just now I am rereading the Book of Wisdom, or The Wisdom of Solomon, in the Old Testament. This is one of the deuterocanonical books—the second set of books affirmed by the Church as the true word of God. These books, probably owing primarily to their late composition, were not (or not entirely) part of the Hebrew Scriptures, but they were included in the Greek. Indeed, Greek was already the dominant cultural language by the time the Book of Wisdom was written in Alexandria in the first century BC (that is, the last century before Christ).

Despite early debates about whether this book was Divinely inspired or merely highly edifying—a point on which even some of the greatest Fathers of the Church differed—the Divine character of the text was affirmed repeatedly by many local synods and all the ecumenical councils that dealt with the question. The most significant of these are the Council of Rome over which Pope Damasus I presided in 382, and two ecumenical councils—the Council of Florence under Pope Eugenius IV in 1442, and the Council of Trent under Pope Paul III in 1546. …

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