Holy land and diaspora in The Book of Wisdom

Abstract

Wisdom is considered against the background of the incidence of these themes in the Israelite sapiential corpus and usage of “diaspora” and related vocabulary. In writings which, like Wisdom, developed biblical tradition in the Greek and early Roman periods it seems that far-reaching modification of the negative Pentateuchal overtones of diaspora did not exclude them, but scattering could be treated as an experience of all Israel, and old views of Jerusalem as the center of Israelite settlement could displace thoughts of diaspora separation. In Wisdom likewise “diaspora” seems absent from the chapters on Solomon, where Jerusalem is the sacred center of an empire; the treatment of the exodus notes Egyptian sojourn, but emphasis lies not on separation from home but on the one people of God found everywhere.