Introduction to December 2021 special issue of the Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha: The Wisdom of Solomon

Abstract

The following is the second special issue of the Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha (JSP) devoted to studies of the Wisdom of Solomon, edited by Karina Martin Hogan and Jason Zurawski. The collection of papers largely derives from three sessions of the Wisdom and Apocalypticism program unit of the Society of Biblical Literature focused on the important first-century text: “The Wisdom of Solomon at the Crossroads of Wisdom, Apocalypticism, and Philosophy” (2018, Denver); “Knowledge and the Cosmos in the Wisdom of Solomon” (2019, San Diego); and “The Wisdom of Solomon” (2020, online). The first four articles, by Emma Wasserman, Benjamin Wold, Bradley Gregory, and Mark Giszczak, were published in the September 2021 issue. And we are very pleased to present the following four studies, fine examples of the current critical study of this influential text, and we would like to thank Matthias Henze, editor of JSP, for the opportunity and for all of the guidance he has graciously offered in getting out and presenting what we hope will be an important contribution to the study of the Wisdom of Solomon. Karina Martin Hogan in her article, “Ahistorical Interpretation of the Torah Narratives in the Wisdom of Solomon,” tackles one of the more debated questions in the history of research on the text, the confounding lack of proper nouns or precise character descriptions in the final nine chapters of the book. Hogan calls into question the traditional designation of this section as the “Book of History,” as the Torah narrative is presented not as a record of historical events but rather as a mythos, as paradigmatic stories designed to educate. Hogan closely examines three examples—the first Antithesis (11:1–14), the