We shall first devote some time to an examination of the Book of Proverbs. The Hebrew "proverb" (_mashal_) means "a representation," and may be used of a fable or a taunt, but is more especially confined to any generalisation from experience or observation on life and character expressed in a rhythmic and polished form. The most usual form of the proverb is a couplet in which a common fact of Nature is placed beside a common fact of human life: "Where there is no wood the fire goes out, and where there is no talebearer strife will cease." The book as a whole would seem to be ascribed to Solomon (i. 1), but this is only the tradition of the final editor; for, as in the case of the Psalter, Proverbs shows every trace of gradual compilation, and the names of other authors are given. The main divisions of the book are as follows:-- A. (i. 1-6). The prologue, by the final editor, either ascribing the work to Solomon or else praising his proverbs. B. (i. 7-ix.). This seems to be the latest addition to the book; it is not a collection of proverbs at all, but is a continuous discourse in praise of Wisdom. In viii. 22 Wisdom is personified as a creature of God present at the creation of the world. This hypostatization of an attribute of God is one of the latest developments of Hebrew thought, and is so unusual to its genius that we are compelled to seek for some possibility of infiltration from foreign sources. The idea is still further developed in Ecclesiasticus (xxiv.), and in the Book of Wisdom has become quite a Platonic speculation (vii. 22-viii. 1). The appearance of this idea in Hebrew thought seems to be most explicable in the period of Greek influence, when Plato's doctrine of the Idea might become known in Palestine; somewhere about 250 B.C. seems a likely date. The identification of virtue with knowledge, which we find in the book, is also due to Greek thought. It was along this line of development that the conception of "the Logos" was welcomed into Jewish thought, to have through Philo such a profound influence on some of the writers of the New Testament.