The Angelomorphic Spirit of Wisdom in the Wisdom of Solomon

In the Wisdom of Solomon, a Jewish writing from the first-century BCE, the “spirit of wisdom” and the personified Wisdom, two concepts well known from the Hebrew Bible, are brought together and developed, partly by the integration of Greek philosophy. Through a reception-historical approach, this study traces intertextual links between the Wisdom of Solomon and earlier Jewish scriptures, and argues that the author of this text also conflates this “personified spirit of Wisdom” with the Angel-of-the-Lord-tradition from the Book of Exodus, with a precedent in Isa 63:9–14, where the Angel of the Presence is identified with the spirit of God. The result is the “Angelomorphic Spirit of Wisdom,” a unique development in late Second Temple Jewish pneumatology and an important background to early Christian pneumatology. In this way, this article contributes to research previously done by John R. Levison and Bogdan G. Bucur on the “Angelic Spirit” in Early Judaism and “Angelomorphic Pneumatology” in early Christianity.