The personification of Wisdom found in this Literature is of far-reaching importance. We must neither read into the passages which treat of this a meaning they were not intended to bear, nor must we explain away the meaning that was really intended. When among the Jewish sages of old Wisdom was personified, they thought of a personality existing alongside of God, an intermediate being between God and the world. This is more or less parallel to the personification or quasi-personification of attributes proper to God which is found in early post-Christian Jewish writings. The special importance of this conception of Wisdom lies not only in the fact that it forms the link between the Palestinian and Hellenic development of Judaism, but also that it represents the contribution made by the Wisdom Literature to the Christology of the New Testament, and has, moreover, greatly influenced Christian theology. In the earlier portions of Proverbs, Wisdom is always presented as something abstract, except perhaps in xvii. 24. A real personification is found in the later parts. In Job it is the wisdom of experience that normally finds expression; but there is a definite personification in xxxviii. 12-28. In Ecclesiastes Wisdom is always something abstract, and, a unique element, the estimate of Wisdom is affected by the Preacher’s pessimism. In Ecclesiasticus all that is taught in the other books about Wisdom finds expression, with the exception of the pessimism of Ecclesiastes; the identification of the Law with Wisdom is a striking characteristic. The Jewish-Hellenistic writer of the Book of Wisdom identifies Wisdom with the holy spirit of the Lord, as well as with the Word (in the Jewish sense), and teaches its divine origin and its existence before the creation of the world (this is common to the Wisdom Literature generally). A brief glance at the teaching concerning Wisdom in the Apocalyptic Literature shows that there is very little in the earliest parts of the Book of Enoch, but there are a number of passages which touch the subject in the “Similitudes,” some of which have peculiar features. In the Secrets of Enoch Wisdom is represented as taking part in the Creation. CHAPTER XII The Doctrinal Teaching of the Apocrypha PRELIMINARY REMARKS