4.1 κρείσσων ἀτεκνία μετὰ ἀρετῆς· ἀθανασία γὰρ ἐστιν ἐν μνήμῃ αὐτῆς, ὅτι καὶ παρὰ θεῷ γινώσκεται καὶ παρὰ ἀνθρώποις. The virtuous woman unable to bear children is a repeated theme in the Hebrew Bible, from Sarah to Rachel to Manoah’s wife to Hannah to, in the later New Testament, Elizabeth. In general, the ancient world was obsessed with fertility: what the biblical tradition offers is not a rejection of the importance of fertility but a unique narrative tradition in which the deity intervenes to guarantee it. In many of these stories God himself is probably the original father of the hero resulting from the divine intervention, prior to the redacted form in which we possess these narratives now. The “memory” (μνήμη) of virtue among both God and humans appeals to both biblical and classical precedents. 4.2 παροῦσάν τε μιμοῦνται αὐτὴν καὶ ποθοῦσιν ἀπελθοῦσαν· That is, humans “remember it present and long for it when it’s gone.” Wisdom does not have a sense of virtue as an enduring presence in the world due to human misconduct. This may be the metaphysical rationale for the numerous cycles of creation: periodically, humans through their wickedness bring about a breakdown of the cosmic order, which must then be reconstituted by the deity. Greek cosmology had much the same idea, both in myth and philosophy, as evidenced in the theory of ages and of periodic cataclysm or, among the Stoics, ekpyrosis. καὶ ἐν τῷ αἰῶνι στεφανηφοροῦσα πομπεύει τὸν τῶν ἀμιάντων ἄθλων ἀγῶνα νικήσασα. The subject is still ἀτεκνία μετὰ ἀρετῆς. “Wreath-wearing in the aeon, it processes having won the contest of blameless prizes.” Wreath-wearing, public processions, and athletic contests which offered prizes were all normative aspects of life in a Greco-Roman polis. In other words, virtuous barrenness is not only tolerable, but brings with it public honor, of the sort ordinary citizens were likely to find desirable. This is a deeply counter-cultural prospect. 4.3 πολύγονον δὲ ἀσεβῶν πλῆθος οὐ χρησιμεύσει καὶ ἐκ νόθων μοσχευμάτων οὐ δώσει ῥίζαν εἰς βάθος οὐδὲ ἀσφαλῆ βάσιν ἑδράσει· δὲ signals the contrast syntactically. Unlike the virtuous childlessness of the righteous, the “fertile multitude of the impious is not useful” or “profitable,” since their bastard children do not plant deep roots for them. Again, the notion of childlessness as a possible good would have been unusual for Jews, Greeks, or Romans, for whom having as many children as possible was a major priority of most lives. In part, this is because of the extremely high rate of infant mortality and death in childbirth in the ancient world: starting the process of having and raising children early and often was the most secure way to ensure the continuity of the family line, though in Roman society the possibility of adoption was also frequently optioned. 4.4 κἄν γὰρ ἐν κλάδοις πρὸς καιρὸν ἀναθάλῃ, ἐπισφαλῶς βεβηκότα ὑπὸ ἀνέμου σαλευθήσεται καὶ ὑπὸ βίας ἀνέμων ἐκριζωθήσεται. The instability of the metaphorical “root” put down by impious promiscuity is detailed. Wisdom’s seeming fixation on this topic is likely rooted in Hellenistic synagogal preaching of sexual and marital ethics. But is there a real social practice in view here, or is this a generalized statement about the wicked? Is Wisdom, for example, against the ubiquitous practice in the ancient world of copulation with slaves and concubines, which occasionally resulted in children? Perhaps, but then we face the issue that in general children of slaves and citizens were also slaves: the exception to this were vernae, many of whom were likely actual children of their masters. In any event, such offspring would not count as continuing the family line: perhaps that’s part of the point of Wisdom’s critique, since the multitude of the children of the impious do not put down a deep “root” for the family. Alternatively, comparison of the wicked to an insecurely planted piece of vegetation is a stock image of Jewish sapiential literature (e.g., Ps. 1). 4.5 περικλασθήσονται κλῶνες ἀτέλεστοι, καὶ ὁ καρπὸς αὐτῶν ἄχρηστος, ἄωρος εἰς βρῶσιν καὶ εἰς οὐθὲν ἐπιτήδειος· 4.6 ἐκ γὰρ ἀνόμων ὕπνων τέκνα γεννώμενα μάρτυρές εἰσιν πονηρίας κατὰ γονέων ἐν ἐξετασμῷ αὐτῶν. ἐξετασμός is one of various words we have now seen for the concept of judgment: “scrutiny,” “examination,” “inspection,” “review,” “visitation.” The idea seems less to be that the illegitimate children are doomed to immoral living by virtue of their parentage, and more that their very existence witnesses against their parents at their judgment, where at least the virtuous barrenness of the righteous leads to everlasting memory among God and men. This is the most straightforward metaphorical logic of the idea that the “fruit” of the illicit affairs is not “useful” for food or anything else: the larger point of having so many children in the ancient world is to ensure that they can take care of you in your old age and carry on the family line and property. But Wisdom suggests that in terms of what really matters in that last phase of life, such children are actually a liability, not a help. We can at this point step back and ask if the root of this metaphorical way of describing the different destinies of righteous and wicked in Wisdom is derived more from Jewish or Greco-Roman culture. After all, biblical literature features many prominent people with multiple wives, concubines, and/or children resulting from what to Greeks and Romans looked like irregular unions, and does not censure them for it; the most obvious are Abraham and Jacob. Monogamy is not a value of the Hebrew Bible. It was however a theoretical ideal among Greeks and Romans, though the restriction of sexual activity to marriage was rarely expected and even more rarely practiced. This might be evidence of Jewish communities in Greco-Roman spaces beginning to adopt more monogamous attitudes towards marriage in an effort to bridge the cultural gap, a practice that will also be apparent in later centuries when Christians adopt Roman marital law and custom as normative (which, as Augustine himself notes, is not biblical). But here, it remains metaphorical insofar as this image derived from social life is used to express the contrast not so much between different marital practices as between the respective fates of virtue and impiety.
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