Sapiential Deuterocanonica

OLD TESTAMENT APOCRYPHA WATCH: Philip Jenkins: FROM THE MOUTH OF THE MOST HIGH.

I recently suggested that we should pay much more attention to the Deuterocanonical books that are no longer found in most Protestant Bibles. Partly this is because of their artistic and cultural influence, but their religious significance is immense.

Two substantial “Second Canon” books in particular demand our attention, namely Wisdom (“the Wisdom of Solomon” and Sirach (Ecclesiasticus). Together with the canonical books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, they are major components of the once-vast wisdom literature of the ancient Jewish world, which reached its height in the last two centuries before the Christian era.

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