A modern translation of the Apocrypha arrived yesterday; the only copy we had was in the Authorised Version, and in very small print. Something more modern (and less taxing on the eye) was called for after an encounter with the Wisdom of Solomon earlier this week, which astounded me with its truth.
The author is talking of wisdom, personified, as in many parts of the wisdom literature in the Old Testament. For me, it's easiest to think of this as analagous to, even identified with, the Holy Spirit. And it was a marvellous passage, which increased my understanding of the person and work of God-as-Spirit.
This engaging with the Apocrypha might draw a sharp intake of breath, a knitting of brows, in some sections of the Christian community. But if Wisdom/the Holy Spirit is intelligent, holy, unique, manifold, subtle, mobile. clear, unpolluted, distinct, invulnerable, loving the good, keen, irresistible, beneficent, humane, steadfast, sure, free from anxiety, all-powerful, overseeing all, and penetrating through all spirits that are intelligent, pure and altogether subtle (Wisdom of Solomon chapter 7)- then why should not truth be found, be communicated to me from these scriptures?
I've come at this in a roundabout way; the Spirit/Wisdom has spoken to me through the mundane, the ordinary, the quotidian stuff of life, as these blogs have tried to demonstrate. So why not through the apocryphal writings of holy men, the lives of holy men and women such as are found in that bit of the Bible which much of the faithful ignore? The defence rests, mi Lud.
I shall carry on reading.......
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