d's creatures," "a master-workman" who assisted
Him in founding heaven and earth, a helpmate and playmate of God, and at
the same time the instructor of men and counselor of princes, inviting all
to share her precious gifts. This conception is found also in the
apocryphal literature,--in Ben Sira, the book of Enoch, the Apocalypse of
Baruch, and the Hellenistic Book of Wisdom.(404)

From this period two different currents of thought appeared. The one
represented wisdom as an independent being distinct from God, and this
finally became merged, under Platonic influence, into the views of
neo-Platonism, Gnosticism, and the Christian dogma. The other identified
the divine wisdom with the Torah, and therefore it is the Torah which
served God as counselor and mediator at the Creation and continues as
counselor in the management of the world. This view led back to strict
monotheism, so that the cosmology of the rabbis spoke alternately of the
divine wisdom and the Torah as the instruments of God at Creation.(405)

5. The Jewish philosophers of the Middle Ages, such as Saadia, Gabirol,
and Jehuda ha Levi, followed the Mohammedan theologians in enumerating
God's wisdom among the attributes constituting His essence, together with
His omnipotence, His will, and His creative energy. But they would not
take wisdom or any other attribute as a separate being, with an existence
outside of God, which would either condition Him or admit a division of
His nature.(406) "God himself is wisdom," says Jehuda ha Levi, referring
to the words of Job: "He is wise in heart."(407) And Ibn Gabirol sings in
his "Crown of Royalty":

"Thou art wise, and the wisdom of Thy fount of life floweth from
Thee;
And compared with Thy wisdom man is void of understanding;
Thou art wise, before anything began its existence;
And wisdom has from times of yore been Thy fostered child;
Thou art wise, and out of Thy wisdom didst Thou create the world,
Life the artificer that fashioneth whatsoever delighteth
him."(408)

Chapter XXIII. God's Condescension

1. An attribute of great importance for the theological conception of God,
one upon which both Biblical and rabbinical literature laid especial
stress, is His condescension and humility. The Psalmist says(409): "Thy
condescension hath made me great," which is interpreted in the Midrash
that the Deity stoops to man in order to lift him up to Himself. A