whole, devised by divine Wisdom, which provides man with instruction in everything from practical skills to cosmology and the “elements”, stoicheía (v. 17), a term taken from Greek philosophy and which was in common use in educated circles in the Hellenic world. Still, “what is distinctive in the biblical text is the conviction that there is a profound and indissoluble unity between the knowledge of reason and the knowledge of faith. The world and all that happens within it, including history and