"The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment shall touch them." That line — read at countless funerals — comes not from Solomon but from an anonymous Jewish author in Alexandria, writing in polished Greek a century or so before Christ. The Wisdom of Solomon is the Apocrypha's philosophical masterpiece: wisdom personified as the craftsman at God's side, a scathing retelling of the Exodus plagues, and a meditation on the afterlife that the New Testament echoes again and again. It bears Solomon's name, as wisdom writings of the age often did, and it stands as the Old Testament answering Greek philosophy on Greek terms — and largely winning.

This book is also available in the Revised Version (1895) — modern spelling.