For verily all men by nature were but vain who had no perception of God, And from the good things that are seen they gained not power to know him that is, Neither by giving heed to the works did they recognize the architect; But either fire, or wind, or swift air, Or circling stars, or raging water, or luminaries of heaven, They thought to be gods that rule the world. And if it was through delight in their beauty that they took them to be gods, Let them […]
⛓ Read Wisdom of Solomon 13 forward — the whole chapter and its afterlife →Where this passage surfaces again, sorted by the strength of the link. Each kind of reuse — formal quotation, deliberate allusion, faint echo, figural pattern — carries its own mark. Follow any reference to read it in place.
Allusion1
A deliberate verbal borrowing without a citation formula.
Paul's natural theology — God's invisible power/divinity perceived through created things, leaving idolaters 'without excuse,' yet they failed to know the Maker — closely tracks Wisdom 13's argument that those who study creation are 'without excuse' for not finding its Artisan. High volume; Paul demonstrably leans on Wisdom here.
High confidenceEcho1
A fainter, low-volume reuse, carried by recurrence or thematic coherence.
Hellenistic-Jewish polemic against those who, knowing the works of creation, fail to know the one God, paralleling Paul's contrast of true knowledge with idolatry. As Second-Temple idol-critique it is squarely available to Paul and his diaspora congregation. Echo of the deuterocanonical natural-theology argument behind vv.4-6.
Medium confidence