Recently I wrote an article on The Provenance of Melito of Sardis’s Canon List as in Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History, Book 4, Chapter 26; you can read that article here. In it, I argued that Melito intends to deliver a Jewish list, for polemical purposes, to Onesimus, rather than a Christian one. Building on the previous article, I want to examine the contents of Melito’s canon list.
In this piece, I will also argue for an alternative reading: rather than Melito providing Onesimus with a Jewish list, he intends to deliver a Christian one. I do this because it has long been debated whether Melito intended to deliver an authoritative Christian list of books to Onesimus. If this reassessment is correct, it raises an important question: what, precisely, did Melito’s list contain? It seems paramount, then, to examine the scholarly treatment of the list’s actual contents.
Scholars almost unanimously agree that Esther is absent and that what’s contained under “Jeremiah” is ambiguous, but what’s genuinely contested is whether the Wisdom of Solomon counts as a separate book in the canon. [1]. That’s because the Greek in Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History 4.26 is itself ambiguous at the crucial point; the word linking “Proverbs of Solomon” to “Wisdom” can be read either as “and,” making them two distinct books, or as “that is,” making “Wisdom” simply an alternate title for Proverbs.[2]
With this in mind, I want to look closely at how “Wisdom” functions in the list Melito provided. Given the debates surrounding Wisdom’s inclusion, I think it’s worth examining closely because I believe Melito likely intends to include the Wisdom of Solomon as a distinct entry in his canon list.
A Contested Entry: The Case for and Against Wisdom
Researchers are somewhat divided on whether Melito’s list includes the Wisdom of Solomon; notably, two scholars, Timothy Michael Law and Lee Martin McDonald, agree that the Wisdom of Solomon is present in the list, whereas others, such as Edmon Gallagher, argue that Wisdom is an alternative title for the book of Proverbs.
What is interesting is that Eusebius writes in Ecclesiastical History, Book 4, Chapter 22:
“And not only he, but also Irenaeus and the whole company of the ancients, called the Proverbs of Solomon All-virtuous Wisdom.”
This is worth examining, as the title “Wisdom” is used for many things, ie, Wisdom of Solomon, Proverbs, and The Wisdom of Ben Sira (Sirach). I will demonstrate below that this usage was fluid regarding the term.
Wisdom Was Not a Fixed Title
Firstly notice in Against Pelagius, Book 1, Jerome in the 4th century cites from “the Book of Wisdom,” but quotes directly from Sirach 3:22. He then quotes from Ecclesiastes 7:16, and finishes with a quote from the “same place” from Wisdom 1:1. Jerome’s interchangeable use of “Wisdom” as a title, pulling quotes from Sirach, Ecclesiastes, and Wisdom of Solomon under the same heading, illustrates well that “Wisdom” was not a precise or stable title in early Christian usage. [3]
This variety seems to be the common understanding of the title of Wisdom for Christians in the early centuries. For example, the title “Wisdom” was directed to the book of Sirach, Wisdom of Solomon, and Proverbs [4]. While this is well attested to it may be worth examining a few of the examples throughout the early centuries.
‘Wisdom’ Used for Sirach
The application of the title “Wisdom” to the book of Sirach finds early patristic support in the writings of Clement of Alexandria, who writes, “The crown of wisdom, then, as the book of Wisdom says, is the fear of the Lord.” [5] This is a quotation of Sirach 1:18.
Clement again emphasizes in the same passage, “Of this also the book of Wisdom plainly says, For mercy and wrath are with Him, for He alone is Lord of both, Lord of propitiations, and pouring forth wrath according to the abundance of His mercy so also is His reproof. (Sirach 16:12) [6].
We see something extraordinarily similar in Origen. Where he says in his Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew: “from who says in the Book of Wisdom with reference to the even temperament of the just man, The discourse of a pious man is always wisdom, but, in regard to what we have said, The fool changes as the moon. (Sirach 27:11)” [7].
What we can deduce from this is the wide variety of titles in reference to the book of Wisdom; but of course, this title is applied to the Wisdom of Solomon as well.
‘Wisdom’ Used for the Wisdom of Solomon
From Augustine: “And hence the book of Wisdom, speaking of men, The thoughts of mortals, it says, are fearful, and our forethought uncertain”(Wisdom 9:14). [8]
And once more from Athanasius: “in the book of Wisdom it is written, ‘Having ordained man through Your wisdom, that he should have dominion over the creatures which You have made.” (Wisdom 9:2.)“ [9].
‘Wisdom’ Used for Proverbs
Finally, this is, of course, well attested to from the book of Proverbs; see the Apostolic Constitution: book one, section 3, which labels wisdom as proverbs as well [10].
From Justin Martyr too: “And it is written in the book of Wisdom: ‘If I should tell you daily events, I would be mindful to enumerate them from the beginning. The Lord created me the beginning of His ways for His works. From everlasting He established me in the beginning, before He formed the earth, and before He made the depths, and before the springs of waters came forth, before the mountains were settled; He begets me before all the hills” (Proverbs 8:22-25) [11].
In summation, clearly as we have seen, Proverbs is a viable option, but one must also recognize Sirach and the Wisdom of Solomon as equal contenders in this context as well.
Weighing the Evidence
Ultimately, if Melito did consider the Wisdom of Solomon to be canonical, it would make the most sense. For one, the proposition that he intended to refer to the same book by using two different titles seems very unlikely. [12]. The varied use in which “Wisdom” was referred to as the Wisdom of Solomon or Sirach seems to be the best candidate. Secondly, if Wisdom was indeed considered canonical, and Melito is deliberately presenting a distinct Christian list, this would align with the Muratorian Fragment, which explicitly includes the Wisdom of Solomon alongside New Testament writings [13], a demonstrably Christian list. Although the Fragment’s dating remains debated, those who favor an earlier dating, placing it within the second century, would find this a strikingly contemporaneous comparison [14].
Melito’s Verbal Debt to the Wisdom of Solomon
Additionally, recognize a striking, yet overlooked, position that Melito cites from the Wisdom of Solomon in his passover Homily [15]. Melito purportedly relies on the Wisdom of Solomon in line 28, where he writes: “At the human loss there was howling and grief over the dead first-born, and all Egypt was stinking with unburied bodies.” This seems too much of a coincidence not to be drawn from Wisdom 18: 10-12, which reads: “But the discordant cry of their enemies echoed back, and their piteous lament for their children was spread abroad. 11 The slave was punished with the same penalty as the master, and the commoner suffered the same loss as the king, 12 and they all together by the one form[g] of death had corpses too many to count. For the living were not sufficient even to bury them, since in one instant their most valued children had been destroyed.”
This is further strengthened by another observation from scholar Chrystosome Larcher who shows a verbal borrowing that Melito draws from the Wisdom of Solomon in his Paschal Homily [16]. Melito repeats a distinctive phrase describing the simultaneity of the firstborn’s deaths no fewer than three times across his homily. In On Pascha line 21 Melito writes: “it was a strange trophy on which to gaze, upon those falling dead in one moment” In line 26, he writes: “At one moment the first-born fruit of the Egyptians was destroyed,” And in §29, he places the same phrase in the mouths of the grieving parents themselves: “We have lost our firstborn in a single moment!” This may seem trivial, but this threefold repetition seems too much of a coincidence not to be drawn from Wisdom 18:12.
The Greek behind “in one moment” (“in one instant” as seen above from the NRSVUE) here is built on the rare noun (ῥοπή) literally “the tilt of a scale,” extended metaphorically to mean the instant in which the balance tips. This is not the ordinary Greek word for “moment” (καιρός or στιγμή would be the expected choice), which makes its recurrence all the more telling. Melito deploys the noun three times, varying only the preposition around it.
We see that Melito is treating ῥοπή as his borrowed keyword, the way you might reuse someone else’s striking word (“cataclysmic,” say) while varying the sentence around it (“in a cataclysmic instant,” “within a cataclysmic moment,” “toward a cataclysmic end”). The grammatical skeleton stays recognizable each time, but he’s clearly composing his own sentences around a phrase he picked up from Wisdom, not transcribing it mechanically. The fact that he reaches for this same uncommon idiom three separate times, narrating the scene, describing its aftermath, and finally voicing it through the mourners themselves, suggests he had absorbed Wisdom’s phrase as part of his own working vocabulary for the episode, rather than borrowing it once in passing. This shows a strong literary dependence on the text of Wisdom of Solomon. Notably fascinating too, this word appears nowhere in the Exodus account itself, which contains no equivalent expression for the instantaneous simultaneity of the deaths, so Melito cannot have drawn it from the base narrative he is retelling.
What Melito’s Septuagint Titles Imply
Finally, consider an often underappreciated point: Melito’s use of Greek titles.
Notably, Melito’s list uses the Septuagint titles for Jeremiah and Daniel, titles under which Baruch traditionally circulated as an appendix to Jeremiah, and Susanna as one of the Greek additions to Daniel. As established in my previous article, Melito’s familiarity with Septuagintal usage is already evident, particularly with respect to Isaiah. Given this, it seems likely that the Septuagintal versions of both Daniel and Jeremiah would have been equally familiar to him. Taken together, this Greek usage makes it reasonable to conclude that Melito intends to include Baruch and Susanna within his list. Note Matthew McWhorter’s work, where he writes about the topic: “Several “canonical” Books are missing, but the guess is they were included as parts of other works (Nehemiah as part of Esdras, Lamentations as part of Jeremiah, etc.). Such presumptions are fine, and we may agree with them (I do, and all these combined Books are seen in the Septuagint), but the same presumptions should be applied to Susanna and Baruch.” [17].
Considering The Above…
I think given the Christian context in which Melito’s list appears, it remains possible that he is still transmitting a Jewish canon received from his Jewish sources. However, it is equally plausible that Melito is presenting Onesimus with a Christian canon, one that must be shaped by the diverse and still-unsettled state of scriptural authority in the early centuries of the church. Understood this way, the Wisdom of Solomon is a strong candidate for inclusion in this debate. Ultimately, my own take is that ‘Wisdom’ most likely functions as an alternate title for Proverbs if this is a Jewish list, but reads more naturally as a separate entry for the Wisdom of Solomon if the list is Christian. I find myself leaning toward the Jewish reading, though slightly, as the evidence here doesn’t allow for a firm conclusion, and this remains just one open question among several surrounding Melito’s list.
Footnotes
- Melito leaves out Esther, doesn’t specify exactly what was contained in Jeremiah (in some Septuagint collections, Baruch, Lamentations, or the Letter of Jeremiah were included together), and probably includes the Wisdom of Solomon. (Tim Law, 268, fn. 16).
- See 318 and 319 of McDonald, Formation of the Biblical Canon Vol. 1 .
- Jerome, Against Pelagius, Book 1. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/30111.htm
- “This phrase was very frequently employed among the Fathers as a title of the Book of Proverbs. Clement of Rome (1 Cor. 57)… He is, so far as I know, the first so to use it. The word is applied also to the apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon, by Epiphanius and others. Among the Fathers the Book of Sirach, the Solomonic Apocrypha, and of the Book of Proverbs all bore the common title, ‘Wisdom,’ which well defines the character of each of them…” (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series, Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, pg. 199, footnote 4). Gary Michuta also notes further scholars who attest to this claim, such as Michael V. Fox in Proverbs 1-9 and also C.H. Toy, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Proverbs (ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark), 1899.
- The Paedagogus (Book I, Chapter 8), https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/02091.htm “The crown of wisdom, then, as the book of Wisdom says, is the fear of the Lord.” (Sirach 1:18)
- The Paedagogus (Book I, Chapter 8).”Of this also the book of Wisdom plainly says, For mercy and wrath are with Him, for He alone is Lord of both, Lord of propitiations, and pouring forth wrath according to the abundance of His mercy so also is His reproof. (Sirach 16:12)”
- Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (Book XIII), https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/101613.htm
- On the Trinity (Book XIV), Chapter 11.
- Discourse 2 Against the Arians, Chapter 19.
- Apostolic Constitution. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/07151.htm
- Dialogue with Trypho, Chapter 129.
- William Whittaker wrote a similar note in A Disputation on Holy Scripture, see The number of Canonical books to scripture: Wherein The Truth of Our Cause Is Illustrated By Other Testimonies. He writes: ” There are some, indeed, who think that this Wisdom of Solomon, which Melito mentions, is the book of Proverbs itself: but I do not agree with them, for no cause can be given why the same book should be named twice.”
- See the contents of the Muratorian Fragment here: https://biblecanon.org/lists/
- Scholar Edmon Gallagher writes in another work: “If I am wrong and Melito meant to include Wisdom of Solomon, Melito’s list would share this deuterocanonical book with the (perhaps) nearly contemporary Muratorian Fragment.” Gallagher, Apocrypha, 239.
- Hennings writes in Der Briefwechsel zwischen Augustinus und Hieronymus und ihr Streit um den Kanon des Alten Testaments und die Auslegung von Gal. 2, 11-14 that Melito quotes from the Wisdom of Solomon in his Passover Homily, see pg. 151.
- C. Larcher makes this point on page 39 fn, 2 in Etudes sur le Livre de la Sagesse.
- Canon Crossfire: Does the Protestant Bible Blow up the Case for Christianity? McWhorter, Matthew, pg. 196- 197. McWhorter also argues on pg. 25 that Melito’s canon list names “Jeremiah” but not Baruch or Lamentations separately. He argues that the same logic to include Lamentations into Jeremiah could also be applied logically to include Baruch. Furthermore, he also notes, “There is citation evidence from others contemporaneous with Melito, as well as the general evidence about use of the Septuagint (the names on Melito’s list are the Septuagint names of Books, not the Hebrew), which point to the inclusion of Baruch.” I assume here McWhorter is referring to Irenaeus in Against Heresies, Book V, chapter 35, where Irenaeus quotes a lengthy passage that is not actually found in the Book of Jeremiah but corresponds to the apocryphal book of Baruch 4:36-5:9. Note here Irenaeus does not identify the material as being from Baruch, but simply attributes it to Jeremiah writing: “And Jeremiah the prophet has pointed out, that as many believers as God has prepared for this purpose, to multiply those left upon earth, should both be under the rule of the saints to minister to this Jerusalem, and that [His] kingdom shall be in it, saying, “Look around Jerusalem towards the east…” Elsewhere, McWhorter argues on pg. 15 that Melito includes the Septuagint name for Daniel in his list, and that version definitely included Susana. After reaching out to McWhorter for clarification, he shows two contemporaneous sources who do this. First note, Against Heresies IV, 26, 3: “hear those words, to be found in Daniel the prophet: ‘O you seed of Canaan, and not of Judah, beauty has deceived you, and lust perverted your heart. You that are waxen old in wicked days, now your sins which you have committed aforetime have come to light; for you have pronounced false judgments, and have been accustomed to condemn the innocent, and to let the guilty go free, albeit the Lord says, The innocent and the righteous shall you not slay.’” (Quoting from Susanna 53-56). Also see Tertullian in The Chaplet, 4: “If, for these and other such rules, you insist upon having positive Scripture injunction, you will find none. … If Susanna also, who was subjected to unveiling on her trial, furnishes an argument for the veiling of women, I can say here also, the veil was a voluntary thing. She had come accused, ashamed of the disgrace she had brought on herself, properly concealing her beauty, even because now she feared to please…”
