Investigation: Was Wisdom "Created"?

"The LORD possessed me (qanani) in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting… When there were no depths, I was brought forth… Then I was by him, as one brought up with him (amon): and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him" (8:22–30).

Around 180 BC Ben Sira wrote: "Before the world, from the beginning, he created me" (Sirach 24:9), and identified Wisdom with "the book of the covenant of the Most High God, the law which Moses commanded" (24:23). The Wisdom of Solomon calls Wisdom "a breath of the power of God… a reflection of eternal light" (7:25–26). The prologue of John: "In the beginning was the Word… All things were made by him" (1:1–3).

In AD 318–325 Arius, a priest of Alexandria, argued from the Greek of 8:22 ("the Lord created me") that the Son of God, identified with Wisdom, was the first and highest creature: "there was when he was not." His opponents, led by Alexander and later Athanasius, answered that the Son is eternally begotten, not made. The Council of Nicaea (325) declared the Son "begotten, not made, of one substance with the Father."

The Hebrew

Qanah usually means "acquire," but in poetry can mean "create" or "beget" (Genesis 14:19, 22; Deuteronomy 32:6; Psalm 139:13); the parallels in 8:23–25 ("set up/woven," "brought forth" as in birth) favour coming into being. Read as a poem, 8:22–31 says that wisdom is older than the world and that the world was made with it. It does not discuss whether Wisdom is a distinct divine person; that question belongs to later readers.

Arius and Athanasius

Arius took the Greek ektisen literally: Wisdom/the Son was created "before the ages." Athanasius (Orations against the Arians II.44–82) argued that "created" refers to the Son's incarnation (his becoming the "beginning of the ways" in human flesh) and that "begotten" in 8:25 refers to his eternal generation. Others (Eusebius of Caesarea) took intermediate positions. Both sides used the same Greek text; the dispute was about interpretation.

Translation after Nicaea

Jerome's Latin (c. 398) rendered qanani as possedit me ("possessed me"), following the 2nd-century Jewish Greek revisers (Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion: ektēsato, "acquired"). The KJV followed with "possessed." Modern translations divide: "created" (NRSV, NJPS), "brought me forth" (NIV), "possessed" (KJV, NASB 1995). Each choice is a judgment about Hebrew, not a doctrinal verdict in itself.

Faith and history

Christians who read Proverbs 8 as speaking of Christ do so through the New Testament and the creeds; Jewish readers read it of Torah; historical scholars read it of personified wisdom. The site shows all three and the evidence for each, without making the poem's original meaning depend on the later debate or the later faith depend on the original poem.