“Please, turn in your Bible to the Apocrypha, Wisdom of Solomon 13:1″

“What fools are men who live in ignorance of God, and who from the good things before their eyes could not learn to know him who really is, and failed to recognize the artificer they observed through his works.” Wisdom 13:1

On Sunday night we looked at Romans chapter 1:18-32. There Paul presents a classic Jewish case against idolatry. For our Old Testament Bible reading we chose Isaiah 44, which Paul surely had in mind. But he probably also had in mind a passage from the Apocrypha: The Wisdom of Solomon 13-15.

People sometimes have a very strong reaction to the Apocrypha: believing that it’s full of myths, that it’s something Catholics snuck into their Bible’s, that it argues for papal infallibility or whatever. Not true at all!

Actually, the Apocrypha is a very important collection of Jewish books that fill out some of the history and theological reflection between the Old Testament and the New Testament. Is it scripture? No. But it is an extremely useful and worthwhile collection of documents that we can all profit from. At least Paul thought it was worth a read!