Biblical Commentary

On the Wisdom of Solomon, Part 4: Portrait of the Wicked

The Wisdom of Solomon is timeless. Its portrayal of the wicked is probably much more relevant today than when it was written.

In our last presentation of this commentary on the Wisdom of Solomon, we already began to introduce the second chapter of the work, and discussed aspects of its opening verses, as they provide a conclusion to ideas which were introduced in chapter 1, as well as an introduction to what is described throughout this chapter. I had also presented and briefly discussed this second chapter of the Wisdom of Solomon in Part 45 of my commentary on the Gospel of John, which was titled Gods and Emperors. That is because this chapter, as a whole, may be seen as a Messianic prophecy, and this first half draws a portrait of the wicked which also very well describes the attitudes and behavior of the men who had opposed Christ during the time of His ministry, and also mentions some of the same sentiments or practices of the wicked for which Christ had rebuked them. Then the later half of this chapter draws a portrait of a just man whom the wicked would persecute for his righteousness, and that also very well describes Christ Himself. Being wrapped in passages which discuss death and resurrection at the beginning of the chapter, and professing that God created man to be immortal at the end of the chapter, it is manifest that the whole of this chapter is indeed a Messianic prophecy.

On the Wisdom of Solomon, Part 3: The Remedy for Sin and Death

In the first two presentations of this commentary on the Wisdom of Solomon we hope to have refuted many of the criticisms of the work, which set out to prove by its language and vocabulary that it was not written until the first century before Christ, or according to some claims, even later. Those same critics usually repeat the unfounded claim that it must have been written by some Alexandrian Jew. However as we discuss the actual content of the work, we hope to make it evident that such claims are also false.

One avenue of investigation in our answering the critics of Wisdom was left open where earlier we had described a source which claimed that fragments of the Wisdom of Solomon were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. In an article found at an internet ministry this claim was made and a book was cited, A Survey of Old Testament Introduction by one Gleason Archer, which was first published in 1974. We ordered a used copy of that book, which we expected to be the same 1985 edition of the work as was quoted by the article in question, but it was not. Instead we received a “revised and expanded” 1994 printing. This newer printing does not mention the Wisdom of Solomon, and we surmise that the article was citing an appendix to the book, because the pagination is different, which is a catalog of books found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. We may further pursue this, but Wisdom is not listed in the 1994 version of the catalog.

On the Wisdom of Solomon, Part 2, the Introduction of Wisdom

In the opening presentation of our commentary on the Wisdom of Solomon, we provided and refuted many of the popular academic opinions of the work and the frequently-repeated criticisms concerning the nature of its text, by which the provenance and veracity of the work have long been challenged. So although we have already provided commentary on the opening verse of the text, which we also hope to continue here, we realized that some of the newer material discussing the Wisdom of Solomon had further-developed criticisms which must also be addressed. So before continuing, we shall do that here.

In the introduction to its own presentation of the Wisdom of Solomon, the New English Translation of the Septuagint (NETS) claims under the subtitle “Character of the Greek” that “There is widespread recognition that the [Wisdom of Solomon] was composed in Greek… The book is an example of a protreptic work (προτρεπτικὸς λόγος), an exhortation to adopt a particular philosophy, and it deploys literary genres familiar from Hellenistic rhetorical texts including the diatribe… the ‘problem’ genre… and the comparison (σύγκρισις…) Correspondingly… the book is written in a good Greek style and shows none of the characteristics of translation Greek.”

Yet it is commonly exhibited that the Book of Proverbs is also “an example of a protreptic work… an exhortation to adopt a particular philosophy”, and further, that the literary diatribe is a common feature of the writings of the Hebrew prophets. Some examples of Classical Greek literature have been recognized as having the attributes of the genre more recently identified as the Problem Play, such as the 5th century work of Euripides titled Alcestis, as are other early works, as well as the Book of Job which is found in the Bible, which we can certainly esteem to date to as early as the 12th or 13th centuries BC, however it definitely predates the Classical Greek period. Lastly, the σύγκρισις, or synkrisis, is a literary form of comparison, and it has been identified as a feature of both the gospel of John and some of the epistles of Paul, especially in the epistle to the Hebrews. But forms of the so-called σύγκρισις are also found in the Hebrew Old Testament. So none of these features of grammar are exclusive to Hellenistic writings, and these charges against the Wisdom of Solomon are meaningless because these things do not prove it to be a product of the Hellenistic period.

On the Wisdom of Solomon, Part 1: Addressing the Critics

Here we are going to examine an apocryphal book of Scripture which I have often cited in my commentaries on various books of the New Testament, and especially in the recently-completed commentary On the Gospel of John. This book I have always accepted as being canonical in spite of the fact that evidence of its great antiquity is very scant, and no original Hebrew version of the work is known to have existed. But rather than judging the book according to the words and deeds of the world, I have chosen to judge it based on its contents.

This book is the Wisdom of Solomon, which I will often identify simply as Wisdom here. It was accepted as canon in the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches, but it was rejected and relegated to apocryphal status by Protestants, who certainly seem to have followed the Jews in this regard. The Wisdom of Solomon was included alongside the other books of Wisdom of the Old Testament in the 4th century Codices Sinaiticus (א) and Vaticanus (B) and in the 5th century Codex Alexandrinus (A), but it is not found in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

At least one source, an online denominational ministry, has published an article on the Scrolls which claims that fragments of the Wisdom of Solomon were found among the scrolls, citing A Survey of Old Testament Introduction by one Gleason Archer, which was first published in 1974. But I have not yet been able to verify this claim, since it is not supported by the first edition of Archer’s work. In the author’s Appendix 4 there is an Inventory of Biblical Manuscripts from the Dead Sea Caves, as he titled it, which has no reference to Wisdom. But the book was revised and updated in 1996, and I have not yet been able to access that edition, as this information is new to me. [I have already ordered a copy of the book.]

On the Gospel of John, Part 51: Feed My Sheep

The resurrection of Yahshua Christ is an assurance, for those men who can accept it, that God is true, that He does indeed transcend His creation, and that He had also determined from the beginning to take a part in His Own creation in the person of Yahshua Christ. This was spoken beforetime in the words of the prophets, and it was the inevitable conclusion that had been made by the apostles themselves once they realized the fact of His resurrection. Therefore once Thomas had seen Him he immediately responded by acknowledging Him to be both “My Lord and my God.” Realizing that Yahweh God incarnate as a man can transcend, or overcome, the physical limitations of His creation, it must be realized that His promises of eternal life for the Adamic man of His creation must also be true, and therefore the resurrection of Christ is an Adamic Dawn, as we have described it, the Son rising as a manifestation of the true Light which is an assurance of life to men, to the entire Adamic race which had previously sat in darkness.

But even this is only the beginning of a Christian understanding which leads to many other inevitable conclusions, too numerable to explain here. In his first epistle, which was evidently written not long after John had written this gospel, his own conclusions made with this understanding led him to explain that we must keep the commandments of God and love our brethren, if we love our brethren and keep the commandments then by that we have confidence that we are of God, and our keeping of the commandments of God is how we also manifest our love for our brethren.

On the Gospel of John, Part 50: Adamic Dawn

In our last presentation on John chapter 20, The Open Tomb, we discussed various aspects of the events of the morning following the resurrection of Christ, and sought to properly correlate John’s account with the descriptions which are found in the other three gospels. While we will continue doing that here, to some degree, we will shift our focus to the significance of the resurrection itself, because the risen Christ also represents what we may call the Adamic Dawn, as it provides for us an assurance that Yahweh our God transcends His Creation, that He Himself takes responsibility for His Creation, and that therefore we must also understand that His promises of eternal life for the Adamic man and salvation for all of the children of Israel are assured in His resurrection.

The ancient Egyptians, Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Greeks and Romans, the earliest Adamic cultures from which we have significant literature, all believed in the immortality of the souls of men and an underworld in which they dwelt, and often even in the judgment of men for their deeds after death. The early Greeks and others also expressed a belief in the possibility of resurrection from among the dead, although not in Christian terms, and attributed many of the same beliefs to the ancient Galatae, Gauls or Germans, attributing their bravery in battle to beliefs they had in their own immortality.

On the Gospel of John, Part 49: The Open Tomb

Presenting our commentary on the account of the final events in the crucifixion and death of Christ as they are described in John chapter 19, we focused on the meaning and implications of the exclamation of Christ where He had said that “It is finished!” In doing that, we hope to have sufficiently elucidated what it was that had been finished at the cross as it had been written in the prophets and explained by the apostles. However doing that, we also neglected any discussion of other aspects of the event, not all of which were recorded by John, so it may be fitting to do that here.

In relation to earlier portions of John chapter 19, we have already discussed and correlated the various descriptions of the fate of Judas Iscariot, the dream of Pilate’s wife, and other things which Matthew had included in his account of the events of this day. Then we discussed at length the culpability for the crucifixion of Christ, and we also discussed the account of Luke which relates that Pilate had sent Christ to Herod Antipas before finally relenting to the demands which the Jews had made for his crucifixion. It is very likely that Herod was elsewhere in the Praetorium, or in the district of the city where it was located, so that entire event may have taken place in a very short time. Sending Christ to Herod, it is evident that Pilate had hoped that Herod would resolve the situation and satisfy the demands of his fellow Jews by another avenue, however Herod had instead merely sent Christ back to Pilate, thereby assuring that He would indeed be crucified as it was Pilate’s last chance to avoid having Him executed.

On the Gospel of John, Part 48: What is Finished?

In our last presentation describing The Jewish Murder of the Messiah of Israel, we left John’s account of the crucifixion of Yahshua Christ with the exclamation by Christ that “It is finished!” and the resulting explanation by John that “turning the head He surrendered the Spirit.” While many commentators speculate upon what Christ had meant where He said that “It is finished”, John himself tells us just before he described the exclamation where he wrote: “With this, Yahshua seeing that He had already finished all things, in order that the writing would be completed, He says: ‘I thirst!’ 29 A vessel full of vinegar sat there. Therefore they brought to His mouth a sponge full of vinegar wrapped in hyssop.”

So where Christ had said “it is finished”, John understood that to mean that all things which were written in the books of the prophets concerning what would happen to the Christ were fulfilled. Christ Himself had expressed that same thing the evening before, as it is recorded in Matthew chapter 26 where He spoke to His disciples at the time of His arrest, and particularly to Peter who had tried to prevent His arrest, and He said “54 But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?” Then Matthew also wrote: “55 In that same hour said Jesus to the multitudes, Are ye come out as against a thief with swords and staves for to take me? I sat daily with you teaching in the temple, and ye laid no hold on me. 56 But all this was done, that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled.”

On the Gospel of John, Part 47: The Jewish Murder of the Messiah of Israel

As we presented the first part of John chapter 19 and the account of the trial of Christ before Pontius Pilate, which we had titled Gods and Emperors, we also found a need to discuss at greater length the issue of culpability for the crucifixion of Christ. This is because there is much propaganda in presumably Christian literature which places the preponderance of guilt for the crucifixion of Christ on Pontius Pilate, or on the Romans in general, when Christ Himself, and His apostles after Him, had clearly placed that guilt on the Judaeans. So it is a wonder to us, that the Jewish propaganda which has forever attempted to shift the blame onto Pilate is so strong that now even so-called Christian scholars, or so-called scholars who claim to be Christians, no longer believe their Bibles or the veracity of the only surviving eye-witness accounts. Instead, they believe the lies of the Jews who with cunning and sophistry have imagined that they can escape the ultimate punishment which awaits them for their act of Deicide, as well as their continued acts of rebellion against that very same God whom they had slain, which they have perpetrated throughout history.

The phenomenon of Bolshevism was not new in 1917. It has erupted continually throughout history, and it is always instigated by the same people who today are known as Jews. The Bolshevik Revolution was not Russian, and the French Revolution was not French. The result of both was the oppression of Christianity and the attempt to introduce an atheistic utopia. While at least most of the Reformers were not Jews, the Jews of Europe certainly also had a significant role in assuring the success of the Reformation, and Martin Luther was allied with them until he recognized their treachery, after which he tried to warn the world, but by then it was too late and the world did not heed his warning.

On the Gospel of John, Part 46: Crime and Culpability

As we presented our commentary on the opening verses of John chapter 19, we saw that the apostle clearly sought to describe Pontius Pilate in a way that absolved him of any complicity, minimizing his culpability in the murder of Christ. So the first charge by the Judaeans regarding Christ that would be a serious offense to Rome was that He had claimed to be king, which is not necessarily true although the gospels do record others as having made that claim on His behalf. Pontius Pilate, interrogating Christ about that charge, sought the truth of the matter and when Christ answered him with an inquiry of His Own, Pilate asked “Am I a Judaean?” That evidently indicated that he was admitting having known nothing of matters peculiar to the people of Judaea, as he then asked “Thine own nation and the chief priests have delivered thee unto me: what hast thou done?” So to answer Pilate’s first question, Christ did not deny or admit being a king, and only said that His kingdom was “not of this world” while professing that He came into the world only to speak the truth.

Although Christ did not deny the charges made by the Judaeans, Pilate was nevertheless reluctant to accept them, and sought to release Him. At this point a custom is mentioned which is difficult to verify because it is only mentioned here in the Gospel accounts, and not in any other surviving records. Pilate was described as having customarily released a prisoner on the feast as a favor to the Judaeans. While Josephus does not discuss anything like this custom in his histories, he does mention other instances of pardons which may have been granted by Roman procurators. So Pilate hoped that they would agree to release Christ, but they demanded Barabbas instead. Barabbas was a robber and a murderer, the leader of a sedition, and therefore he deserved to die. But looking at the name Barabbas from a prophetic point of view, since in Hebrew it apparently means son of the Father, in that manner it very well represents the fact that Christ had died in exchange for the sins of the sons of His Own Father.

On the Gospel of John, Part 45: Gods and Emperors

In our last presentation of this 18th chapter of the Gospel of John we attempted to answer the question which was posed by Pontius Pilate, where he had asked what is truth? with the assertion that real truth is what is relative to the Will of God. So Pilate did not receive an answer to his question, since, as we have also frequently explained throughout this commentary, Yahweh God endows men with wisdom and knowledge on a need-to-know basis. So Pilate did not really need to know the truth, since it was written in the prophets that the Christ had to die, as Christ had also frequently told His Own disciples, and perhaps if Pilate had learned the truth in his conversation with Christ, the Will of God may have been hindered. Therefore it must have also been the Will of God that Pilate did not find the truth.

There are apocryphal tales which indicate that Pilate had later learned the truth concerning Christ, but I would not repeat any of those. Another lie is the description of the fate of Pilate as it is recounted in the so-called “lost” chapter of Acts, a forgery which represents itself to be the 29th chapter of Luke’s second book. There are Identity Christians who promote that work as “truth” when it is actually an absolute fraud. As we already explained here, Pilate had remained stationed in his office in Judaea until 36 AD, or perhaps as late as 37 AD, when he was relieved after complaints of how he had handled a sedition in Syria, and he returned to Rome. From that point he disappears from the historical record, and later Christians who reported his having committed suicide, such as Eusebius of Caesareia, lacked any substantiation to establish the claim as fact.

On the Gospel of John, Part 44: What is Truth?

Discussing the first portion of John chapter 18, we endeavored to illustrate the difference in the personality and deeds of Peter the apostle with the deeds and fate of Judas Iscariot. Although Judas was a devil, both his participation in the earthly ministry of Christ and the manner in which his own life came to an end had resulted in the fulfillment of certain prophecies in the Word of God concerning the passion of the Christ as it was prophesied in the Old Testament Scriptures. In contrast, Peter, an apostle of Christ and a child of God, had tried rather persistently to exert his own will upon the transpiring events, and for that he had to be rebuked by Christ on several occasions. Now here in the garden Gethsemane, as Peter attacked an officer of the temple while being greatly outnumbered by the Roman soldiers, Christ had to rebuke him once again, and we see that Peter was saved and ultimately went on to complete his own ministry in the gospel in spite of himself and his stubborn personality.

The lesson in this comparison is that Yahweh God can use even a devil to accomplish His will, as He did with Judas. But when men attempt to interfere, as Peter had attempted, they shall fail to succeed and they shall be led by God to fulfill the destiny which He has assigned to them whether they like it or not. This is the meaning which Christ Himself had explained to Peter as it is recorded at the end of John’s gospel, in chapter 21 where He told him “18 Verily, verily, I say unto thee, When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not.”

On the Gospel of John, Part 43: My Will, or His Will?

The first pronoun in the subtitle is meant not in reference to myself, but to the reader or listener of this presentation.

Presenting our commentary on the lengthy prayer of Yahshua Christ which is found in John chapter 17, I hope to have explained sufficiently what it is to be “not of the world”, as Christ had prayed for His disciples and said: “16 They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. 17 Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.” But in spite of that, I understand that there are always going to be lingering questions, as it is a broad topic with great implications as to how a Christian should conduct himself as he abides within the world. It is certainly evident that Christians must remain in the world physically if the Kingdom of God is ever going to be “on earth as it is in heaven”, so Christ had also prayed saying “15 I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.” Therefore Christians must live and survive in the world, while at the same time eschewing the evils which are also in the world.

At left: Comet Hale-Bopp by Philipp Salzgeber, CC BY-SA 2.0 AT. Wikimedia Commons

On the Gospel of John, Part 42: Out of This World

It is easy for any so-called priest or pastor to tell other men what to do, and to find one verse of Scripture or another to justify his position, especially if he does not have to do those things himself. So if he is not humble, he himself may ultimately become a parasite, feeding off the body of his flock while they themselves wither and die. This is probably the state of most denominational churches today, and especially the Roman Catholic Church, which is why they always seek new audiences, for which they turn to South America, Africa and Asia. No different than the international banks and global corporations, the so-called churches constantly need to find new ways to satiate their thirst for money and power.

On the Gospel of John, Part 41: God Glorified

All Christians can profess to glorify God, but only Identity Christians can know exactly how and why God should be glorified.

Presenting the final portion of John chapter 16 we discussed the Consolation of Expectation, as Christians encompassed by a world of sin certainly should find their consolation in an expectation of the fulfillment of the promises of Yahweh their God, and in turn that should be the substance of their faith. Yahweh God is glorified when man realizes that He keeps His promises, and comes to understand that He is true. Abraham was made an example as Yahweh had spoken to his son Isaac, and explained that his father was blessed “5 Because that Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.” Abraham had done those things because he believed Yahweh, as we read in Romans chapter 4, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.” In that same manner, if we believe God and keep His commandments it shall be counted to us for righteousness. We find this where Paul, speaking of Abraham’s seed, or offspring, had said in that same chapter “that righteousness might be imputed unto them also” who “walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham.” That faith of Abraham was his belief that God would indeed keep his promises.

On the Gospel of John, Part 40: The Consolation of Expectation

Discussing the The Inevitability of Persecution as we presented the opening verses of John chapter 16, we sought to illustrate the fact that even today all true Christians, meaning those who seek to keep the commandments of Christ, should expect to be persecuted by the society-at-large in one form or another. If a Christian is not being persecuted by the world around him, if a Christian is comfortable with the world around him, then he is not really living for Christ. In Romans chapter 6, Paul of Tarsus had described, in part, what it means to live for Christ, as Christians who truly seek to do so should separate themselves from sin. Today’s churches have become agents for the “princes of this world”, and have created a false narrative urging their members to accept all sorts of sin and sinners based on what they call “Christian tolerance”, but true Christians should never be tolerant of sin. The true Christian should have already walked away from sin, as well as from those who remain in sin.

On the Gospel of John, Part 39: The Inevitability of Persecution

As we brought our commentary On the Gospel of John to the end of John chapter 15, in a presentation which we had called Genesis Synthesis, we repeated some of the things that we had said over the previous chapters, first because Christ Himself had repeated some things that He had said earlier that same night, and secondly, because we wanted to elucidate the fact that many of the assertions which He had made in the gospel are intrinsically intertwined with the symbols and allegories found in the accounts in the opening chapters of Genesis. In turn, this helps us to understand and to prove that He is indeed the remedy for the fall of our race as it is recorded in Genesis, according to a plan which was first hinted at in the allegories of Genesis, and that this was planned by Yahweh from the beginning. So in our commentary we have sought to illustrate the fact that the plan of Yahweh our God for His creation was indeed known by Him, was revealed through the Scriptures as history progressed, and has not changed course since the very beginning. We must not think that it would suddenly change course today, or that our God would somehow forget His Word, as we have the Revelation of Christ and therefore we can certainly determine what is unfolding as it happens.

On the Gospel of John, Part 38: Genesis Synthesis

This program, a commentary on John chapter 15, is titled Genesis Synthesis because the Bible is the same book, and the plan of Yahweh our God has never changed from beginning to end. Doing this, I am going to repeat some of the concepts which we have presented over our last few presentations, but here in John chapter 15 Christ also repeats certain concepts on several occasions, so I won’t feel too terribly about it.

In our last two presentations of this commentary On the Gospel of John, which were titled The Way and The True Vine and the Tree of Life, we have made the assertion that Yahshua Christ is the Tree of Life, and that the tree itself also represents the race of Adam which Yahweh had created, as the creation is described in Genesis chapters 1 and 2. Here we will continue to make those assertions, and offer further proof of their veracity as we proceed through John chapter 15. We also hope to elucidate the synthesis of the gospel of Christ with the fall of Adam in the Genesis account, as the overall plan of Yahweh God for the Adamic man which He had initially created is indeed revealed in the gospel. As we may read in the Wisdom of Solomon, in chapter 2, “23… God created man to be immortal, and made him to be an image of his own eternity.” We cannot imagine that God would fail.

On the Gospel of John, Part 37: The True Vine and the Tree of Life

In our last presentation of this commentary on John chapter 14 we discussed The Way as we saw in verse 6 of the chapter that Christ had declared that He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. So we made the assertion that the way of Christ leads to the tree of life, which, to put it simply, is Christ Himself. Then, because He had also said in verse 15 of this chapter that “If ye love me, keep my commandments”, an admonition which He repeated several times throughout His discourse on this evening before He was crucified, we may discern that the keeping of the law represents the way to Him. As we also explained, this is the significance of the cherubs which, as it is described in Genesis chapter 3, were at first set to “keep the way of the tree of life”. So the cherubs had protected that path to Christ, as they were later seen aside the mercy seat which was atop the Ark of the Covenant wherein the tablets of the law were kept. That mercy seat represented the ultimate judgment seat of Christ, where Paul wrote in Romans chapter 14 “for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.”

On the Gospel of John, Part 36: The Way

When Yahshua Christ chose His apostles from among the men who had first encountered Him at the start of His ministry, which is when He was baptized by John, they were simple and uneducated laborers, and for the most part, fishermen from the shores of Galilee. These men were not schooled in Scripture except for their attendance at the synagogues on the sabbath days, and the customary reading from the law of Moses which is referred to by James in Acts chapter 15. So far as in Acts chapter 4, at least some of the apostles were still considered unlearned, where we read “13 Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus.” Since the synagogues were the instruments of religious organization in Judaea, the teachings would have naturally been in accordance with the doctrines of the Pharisees and Sadducees, who dominated religious and political activity throughout Judaea.

But Christ did not occupy the course of His ministry schooling the apostles in the details of Scripture and giving them an education in letters. In fact, as we see in that verse from Acts chapter 4 which we have just cited, their testimony of Christ was even more valuable and made more of an impression because they were unschooled. These were simple men who witnessed profound events and gave plain and simple testimonies concerning the substance of those events. For that reason, the gospel accounts were written without craft or guile. As Paul later attested in his first epistle to the Thessalonians, “For our exhortation was not of deceit, nor of uncleanness, nor in guile: But as we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel, even so we speak”.