The author further specifies that God created the world
“out of formless matter” (11:17), and we must now further inquire whether he
believed that this formless matter was itself created by God, thus espousing a
double creation theory, or whether he considered it to be eternal. There is
considerable evidence, both internal and external, which makes it unmistakably
clear that the latter alternative is the correct one. First, since no explicit
theory of creation ex nihilo had
heretofore been formulated in either Jewish or Greek tradition, we should
expect an emphatic and unambiguous statement from the author in this matter, if
that were indeed his position. Second, as Grimm had already pointed out long
ago (in his 1860 commentary on 11:17), it was the author’s object to adduce as
great a proof as possible of the power of God. Since creation ex nihilo would be an even greater
marvel than that of conferring form on an already existent matter, he could
hardly have failed to have specified the former had he thought it possible.
Third, in his account of some of the miracles performed by God on behalf of the
Israelites (especially the splitting of the Red Sea), the author employs a
Greek philosophical principle in order to make the notion of miracles more
plausible (see Note on 19:6), but had he held the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, he could hardly have
been troubled by lesser miracles and sought a philosophical principle to
explain them, for creatio ex nihilo
is the miracle of miracles. It quickly became the paradigm for God’s miraculous
powers, and its denial was taken to betoken the undermining of revealed
religion (cf. Maimonides, Guide 2.22,
25; Albo Iqqarim 1.12.1; Abravanel Mifʿalot Elohim 6a). It is true that
Eudorus of Alexandria (fl. ca. 25 bce), alone among the Middle Platonists, held
the view, under the influence of Neopythagoreanism, that the One or Supreme God
is the cause both of the ‘Ideas’ and of matter, but unfortunately we lack
further information as to how this was understood by him (Simplicius In Aristotelis de Physica Commentarii
181, 10ff, Diels; Alex.Aphr. In Metaphysica 988a 10–11, Hayduck; Dillon:
126–128). If, as is likely, he conceived of the One as emanating both the Monad
and the Dyad (see Note on 7:25), it would be difficult to imagine that the
author of Wisd could be comfortable with such a notion. To conceive of Wisdom
as part of God’s essence is one thing, but to allow that the material principle
is itself also part of the divine essence would probably have been too much for
him to swallow. In any case, the concept of creation ex nihilo formed no part of Greek philosophical thought or of
Jewish Hellenistic or rabbinic thought, and its first explicit formulation
appeared in second-century Christian literature, where (undoubtedly under the
impetus of the Gnostic challenge) the argument for a double creation is made on
the grounds that creation out of an eternal primordial element would compromise
the sovereignty of God (Tatian Oratio ad
Graecōs 5; Theophilus Ad Autolycum
2.4, 10 ad fin.). (David Winston, The Wisdom of Solomon: A New Translation
with Introduction and Commentary [AYB 43; New Haven: Yale University Press,
2008], 38-40)
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