Along a Marvelous Way: the Significance of Middle Platonism for Understanding Wisdom of Solomon’s Soteriology

An analysis of personified Sophia’s soteriological role illuminates the interrelationship between eschatology and ontology in the Wisdom of Solomon. Read within the philosophical milieu of early imperial Platonism, Sophia functions similarly to divine intermediaries in the writings of Alcinous, Plutarch of Chaeronea, and Numenius of Apamea in how she leads souls from the earthly to the intellectual realm. In contrast to the temporal orientations in the treatise before and after, Wisdom 6:22–10:18 depicts Sophia’s benefit to humankind as ahistorical and ontological in nature.