The Doctrine of the Divine Education of Mankind in the Greek Bible

Abstract

This essay seeks to retrieve an important foundation in the constitution of the theology of history in patristic times, i.e., the notion of the providential education of Mankind, uncovering its origins in the translation of the Hebrew Bible to the Greek, the Septuagint, which can be traced back to the Alexandrian Jewish community of the Second Century B.C. The aim is to contribute to the history of the development of the notion of Divine Providence in a particular strand of Eastern Christian thought, from Irinaeus to Origen and beyond. In order to achieve that, the essay offers an in-depth reading of the Greek translation of certain key passages in the Deuteronomy that point to a pedagogical interpretation of Divine Action, then discussing the more developed versions of that view in the new texts authored by the Hellenized Jews of Alexandria around the 3rd Century B.C, such as “The Wisdom of Salomon” and Ben Sirach’s “Ecclesiasticus”.