Wisdom was thought of as an intermediate being between God and the world, a personality existing alongside of God, but separate from Him. This is more or less parallel to some other personifications, or quasi-personifications, of certain attributes proper to God which appear in early post-Christian Jewish writings; these occupy an intermediate position between personalities and abstract beings. While, on the one hand, they are represented as being so closely connected with God as to appear as parts of Him, or attributes, they are, on the other hand, so often spoken of as undertaking individual action that they must be regarded in a real sense as separate from Him.[311] The special importance of this conception of the hypostasis of Wisdom lies not only in the fact that it forms the link between the Palestinian and Hellenistic development of Judaism, but also that it represents the contribution made by the Wisdom Literature to the Christology of the Old Testament, and has, moreover, greatly influenced Christian theology.[312] What has been said must now be illustrated from the books of the Wisdom Literature. In the earlier portions of Proverbs, Wisdom is always an abstract thing; the only passage in which one might conceivably discern a tendency to something different would be xxii. 24: Wisdom is before the face of him that hath understanding; but it is doubtful whether this means more than that when a man has sought Wisdom and has found it, Wisdom may be said to be “before his face,” i.e., it is the man who has understanding before whose face (mental vision) Wisdom appears, because he has sought her. It is in what is pretty generally regarded as the latest portion of the book (viz. i.-ix., belonging to the third century B.C. _circa_) that a real personification of Wisdom is found; the whole of chapter viii. is a speech uttered by Wisdom; much of it is undoubtedly figurative, but the section viii. 22-31 evidently represents something more than figurative language; it is too long to give in full, but a few of the verses must be given in order to illustrate what has been said: The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, Before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, Or ever the earth was. When there were no depths, I was brought forth; When there were no fountains abounding with water.... When he established the heavens I was there; When he set a circle upon the face of the deep; When he made firm the skies above; When the fountains of the deep became strong; When he gave to the sea its bound, That the waters should not transgress his commandment; When he marked out the foundations of the earth; Then was I by him, as a master workman....