Wisdom Literature of the Apocrypha and Related Compositions of the Second Temple Era

By examining the approaches to wisdom evident in its literary production, it is possible to get a glimpse of the diversity of Second Temple Jewish viewpoints. The identification of one trajectory is an attempt to describe and evaluate certain trends that are apparent in the literature without being able to make the claim that such an attempt is exhaustive. On the basis of the evidence available in one specific trajectory, Ben Sira and Wisdom of Solomon make the closest correlations between wisdom and Torah. While not providing evidence that the Torah was valued primarily as a collection of Pentateuchal law, it is apparent why these two compositions were valued by Jewish writers for whom this became the case.