The following piece is adapted from a longer entry that argues that the New Testament identifies Jesus as the creator.
Proverbs 8 is a highly influential text within Second Temple-era Judaism and its first-century mutations. Jews and Christians alike engaged with it, each trying to understand the passage’s contribution to the identity of the creator. Many great Christian thinkers have read this passage as descriptive of the Trinitarian Father-Son relationship. Justin Martyr and Origen were among the first to use Proverbs 8 in this way, a move that would later influence Nicene theology. They read the passage as saying that the Father created with the aid of, or through, Wisdom, later identified with the Son. Below is the relevant portion:
Proverbs 8:22-31 NRSVUE
[22] “The LORD created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago. [23] Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. [24] When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. [25] Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth, [26] when he had not yet made earth and fields or the world’s first bits of soil. [27] When he established the heavens, I was there; when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, [28] when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, [29] when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, [30] then I was beside him, like a master worker, and I was daily his delight, playing before him always, [31] playing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.
