The ‘Powers’ of Personification: Rhetorical Purpose in the ‘Book of Wisdom’ and the Letter to the Romans

While scholars have often found value in comparing Wisdom and Romans, a comparison of the use of personification in these works has not yet been made, despite the striking parallels between them. Furthermore, while scholars have studied many of these personifications in detail, no one has investigated an individual personification with respect to the general use of the trope in the work. Instead, most of this research focuses on a personification in relation to its nature as either a rhetorical device or a supernatural power. The Powers of Personification seeks to push beyond this debate by evaluating the evidence in a different light - that of its purpose within the overall use of personification in the respective work and in comparison with another piece of contemporaneous theological literature.

This book proposes that the authors of Wisdom and Romans employ personification to distance God from the origin of evil, to deflect attention away from the problem of righteous suffering to the positive sides of the experience, or to defer the solution for the suffering of the righteous to the future.