We reading today from the Book of Wisdom. The book is written late in Israel’s history — perhaps as recently as 100BC and in Greek. For this reason it never made it into the Jewish Bible — and since that was the basis for Martin Luther’s translation — not in Bible used by Protestants to this day. It is considered to be Deuterocanonical, that is “of the sIt wecond canon.” The Book was in the Greek version of the Bible (the Septuagint) used by the early Church. It was popular among those first Christians because it was designed to help individuals to live a godly life. Up until this point the Jewish scriptures were concerned with patriarchs, prophets, kings — big picture items. By the time Wisdom was written those national concerns were crushed and the book was designed to help individuals to live as the People of God in the new reality. One needs wisdom to make the right choices in such a confusing world. For us today the idea of a personal conversion based on wisdom seems like the proper starting point as our national and religious institutions are proving unreliable.
