The Wisdom of Solomon
The fragment’s discussion of Wisdom presents yet another conundrum. Wisdom
is often included among early Christian manuscripts of the Bible, including
Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus, and Codex Alexandrinus, but it is placed
among the deuterocanonical or intertestamental books. The fragment’s inclusion
of Wisdom among apostolic texts is puzzling and its placement here appears to
be unique. It is possible that the hesitance to include it among a list of
Jewish scriptures preceding the fragment’s list of Gospels, Pauline epistles,
and other early Christian literature is reflective of the tradition that the
number of books in the Old Testament is equal to the number of letters in the
Hebrew alphabet: twenty- two. The presence of Wisdom also supports the proposal
of a Greek original for the fragment, since a Greek reading of ὑπὸ Φιλῶνος (“by
Philo”) misread as ὑπὸ φίλων (“by his friends”) helps to explain the strange
claim about its authorship. Regardless of dating, the result of the
Fragmentist’s argument is the same— that Solomon did not write Wisdom, though
this did not present a problem for its inclusion. A partner to the odd
exclusion of 1 Peter, Wisdom represents an anomalous inclusion by the
Fragmentist. This unique inclusion points to a canon in flux, perhaps in the
late second or third century, rather than a later, more stable canonical
collection more akin to those we find throughout the fourth century. (Kelsie
G. Rodenbiker, Scriptural Figures and the Fringes of the New Testament Canon
[Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2025], 78-79)
