SOLOMON
AND
SOLOMONIC LITERATURE
BY
MONCURE DANIEL CONWAY
CHICAGO
THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY
London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., Ltd.
1899
INSCRIBED
TO MY BROTHER OMARIANS
OF THE
OMAR KHAYYÁM CLUB
LONDON
"Seek the circle of the wise: flee a thousand leagues from men
without wit. If a wise man give thee poison, drink it without fear;
if a fool proffer an antidote, spill it on the ground."
CONTENTS
Page
Preface v
CHAPTER I
Solomon 1
CHAPTER II
The Judgment of Solomon 12
CHAPTER III
The Wives of Solomon 24
CHAPTER IV
Solomon's Idolatry 30
CHAPTER V
Solomon and the Satans 34
CHAPTER VI
Solomon in the Hexateuch 41
CHAPTER VII
Solomonic Antijahvism 51
CHAPTER VIII
The Book of Proverbs and the Avesta 59
CHAPTER IX
The Song of Songs 89
CHAPTER X
Koheleth (Ecclesiastes) 104
CHAPTER XI
Wisdom (Ecclesiasticus) 111
CHAPTER XII
The Wisdom of Solomon 118
CHAPTER XIII
Epistle to the Hebrews (A Sequel to Sophia Solomontos) 129
CHAPTER XIV
Solomon Melchizedek 150
CHAPTER XV
The Pauline Dehumanization of Jesus 164
CHAPTER XVI
The Mythological Mantle of Solomon Fallen on Jesus 176
CHAPTER XVII
The Heir of Solomon's Godhead 194
CHAPTER XVIII
The Last Solomon 207
CHAPTER XIX
Postscripta 234
PREFACE.
An English lady of my acquaintance, sojourning at Baalbek, was
conversing with an humble stonecutter, and pointing to the grand
ruins inquired, "Why do you not occupy yourself with magnificent work
like that?" "Ah," he said, "those edifices were built by no mortal,
but by genii."
These genii now represent the demons which in ancient legends were
enslaved by the potency of Solomon's ring. Some of these folk-tales
suggest the ingenuity of a fabulist. According to one, Solomon
outwitted the devils even after his death, which occurred while he was
leaning on his staff and superintending the reluctant labors of the
demons on some sacred edifice. In that posture his form remained for
a year after his death, and it was not until a worm gnawed the end
of his staff, causing his body to fall, that the demons discovered
their freedom.
If this be a fable, a modern moral may be found by reversing the
delusion. The general world has for ages been working on under the
spell of Solomon while believing him to be dead. Solomon is very much
alive. Many witnesses of his talismanic might can be summoned from
the homes and schools wherein the rod is not spared, however much
it spoils the child, and where youth's "flower of age" bleaches in a
puritan cell because the "wisest of men" is supposed to have testified
that all earth's pleasures are vanity. And how many parents are in
their turn feeling the recoil of the rod, and live to deplore the
intemperate thirst for "vanities" stimulated in homes overshadowed by
the fear-of-God wisdom for which Solomon is also held responsible? On
the other hand, what parson has not felt the rod bequeathed to the
sceptic by the king whom Biblical authority pronounces at once the
worldliest and the wisest of mankind?
More imposing, if not more significant, are certain picturesque
phenomena which to-day represent the bifold evolution of the Solomonic
legend. While in various parts of Europe "Solomon's Seal," survival
from his magic ring, is the token of conjuring and fortune-telling
impostors, the knightly Order of Solomon's Seal in Abyssinia has been
raised to moral dignity by an emperor (Menelik) who has given European
monarchs a lesson in magnanimity and gallantry by presenting to a
"Queen of the South" (Margharita), on her birthday, release of the
captives who had invaded his country. While this is the tradition
of nobility which has accompanied that of lineal descent from the
Wise Man, his name lingers in the rest of Christendom in proverbial
connexion with any kind of sagacity, while as a Biblical personality
he is virtually suppressed.
In one line of evolution,--whose historic factors have been Jahvism,
Pharisaism, and Puritanism,--Solomon has been made the Adam of
a second fall. His Eves gave him the fruit that was pleasant and
desirable to make one wise, and he did eat. Jahveh retracts his
compliments to Solomon, and makes the naïve admission that deity
itself cannot endow a man with the wisdom that can ensure orthodoxy,
or with knowledge impregnable by feminine charms (Nehemiah xiii.);
and from that time Solomon disappears from canonical Hebrew books
except those ascribed to his own authorship.
That some writings attributed to Solomon,--especially the "Song of
Songs" and "Koheleth" (Ecclesiastes),--were included in the canon,
may be ascribed to a superstitious fear of suppressing utterances
of a supernatural wisdom, set as an oracle in the king and never
revoked. This view is confirmed and illustrated in several further
pages, but it may be added here that the very idolatries and alleged
sins of Solomon led to the detachment from his personal self of his
divinely-conferred Wisdom, and her personification as something apart
from him in various avatars (preserving his glory while disguising
his name), an evolution culminating in ideals and creeds that have
largely moulded Christendom.
The two streams of evolution here suggested, one issuing from
the wisdom books, the other from the law books, are traceable
in their collisions, their periods of parallelism, and their
convergence,--where, however, their respective inspirations continue
distinguishable, like the waters of the Missouri and the Mississippi
after they flow between the same banks.
The present essays by no means claim to have fully traced these lines
of evolution, but aim at their indication. The only critique to which
it pretends is literary. The studies and experiences of many years
have left me without any bias concerning the contents of the Bible, or
any belief, ethical or religious, that can be affected by the fate of
any scripture under the higher or other criticism. But my interest in
Biblical literature has increased with the perception of its composite
character ethnically. I believe that I have made a few discoveries in
it; and a volume adopted as an educational text-book requires every ray
of light which any man feels able to contribute to its interpretation.
SOLOMONIC LITERATURE.
CHAPTER I.
SOLOMON.
There is a vast Solomon mythology: in Palestine, Abyssinia, Arabia,
Persia, India, and Europe, the myths and legends concerning the
traditional Wisest Man are various, and merit a comparative study they
have not received. As the name Solomon seems to be allegorical, it is
not possible to discover whether he is mentioned in any contemporary
inscription by a real name, and the external and historical data
are insufficient to prove certainly that an individual Solomon ever
existed. [1] But that a great personality now known under that name did
exist, about three thousand years ago, will, I believe, be recognised
by those who study the ancient literature relating to him. The
earliest and most useful documents for such an investigation are:
the first collection of Proverbs, x-xxii. 16; the second collection,
xxv-xxix. 27; Psalms ii., xlv., lxxii., evidently Solomonic; 2 Samuel
xii. 24, 25; and 1 Kings iv. 29-34.
As, however, the object of this essay is not to prove the existence
of Solomon, but to study the evolution of the human heart and mind
under influences of which a peculiar series is historically associated
with his name, he will be spoken of as a genuine figure, the reader
being left to form his own conclusion as to whether he was such,
if that incidental point interests him.
The indirect intimations concerning Solomon in the Proverbs and
Psalms may be better understood if we first consider the historical
books which profess to give an account of his career. And the search
naturally begins with the passage in the Book of Kings just referred
to:
"And God gave Solomon wisdom and intelligence exceeding much,
and largeness of heart, even as the sand on the seashore. And
Solomon's wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the
East, and all the wisdom of Egypt. For he was wiser than all men;
than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, and Calcol, and Darda, the
sons of Mahol; and his fame was in all the surrounding nations. He
spake three thousand parables, and his songs were a thousand
and five. He spake of trees, from the cedar of Lebanon to the
hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts,
birds, reptiles, fishes. And there came people of all countries to
hear the wisdom of Solomon, and from all the kings of the earth,
which had heard of his wisdom."
This passage is Elohist: it is the Elohim--perhaps here the gods--who
gave Solomon wisdom. The introduction of Jahveh as the giver, in
the dramatic dream of Chapter iii., alters the nature of the gift,
which from the Elohim is scientific and literary wisdom, but from
Jahveh is political, related to government and judgment.
As for Mahol and his four sons, the despair of Biblical historians,
they are now witnesses that this passage was written when those
men,--or perhaps masculine Muses,--were famous, though they are unknown
within any period that can be called historical. As intimated, they may
be figures from some vanished mythology Hebraised into Mahol (dance),
Ethan (the imperishable), Heman (faithful), Calcol (sustenance),
Darda (pearl of knowledge).
In speaking of 1 Kings iv. 29-34 as substantially historical it is not
meant, of course, that it is free from the extravagance characteristic
of ancient annals, but that it is the nearest approach to Solomon's
era in the so-called historical books, and, although the stage of
idealisation has been reached, is free from the mythology which grew
around the name of Solomon.
But while we have thus only one small scrap of even quasi-historical
writing that can be regarded as approaching Solomon's era, the
traditions concerning him preserved in the Book of Kings yield
much that is of value when comparatively studied with annals of the
chroniclers, who modify, and in some cases omit, not to say suppress,
the earlier record. Such modifications and omissions, while interesting
indications of Jahvist influences, are also testimonies to the strength
of the traditions they overlay. The pure and simple literary touchstone
can alone be trusted amid such traditions; it alone can distinguish the
narratives that have basis, that could not have been entirely invented.
In the Book of Chronicles,--for the division into two books was by
Christians, as also was the division of the Book of Kings,--we find
an ecclesiastical work written after the captivity, but at different
periods and by different hands; it is in the historic form, but really
does not aim at history. The main purpose of the first chronicler is to
establish certain genealogies and conquests related to the consecration
of the house and lineage of David. Solomon's greatness and his building
of the temple are here transferred as far as possible to David. [2]
David captures from various countries the gold, silver, and brass,
and dedicates them for use in the temple, which he plans in detail,
but which Jahveh forbade him to build himself. The reason of this
prohibition is far from clear to the first writer on the compilation,
but apparently it was because David was not sufficiently highborn and
renowned. "I took thee from the sheepcote," says Jahveh, but adds,
"I will make thee a name like unto the name of the great ones that are
in the earth;" also, says Jahveh, "I will subdue all thine enemies." So
it is written in 1 Chronicles xvii., and it could hardly have been
by the same hand that in xxii. wrote David's words to Solomon:
"It was in my heart to build an house to the name of Jahveh my
God; but the word of Jahveh came to me, saying: 'Thou shalt not
build an house unto my name, because thou hast shed much blood
upon the earth in my sight; behold a son shall be born unto thee
who shall be a man of rest, and I will give him rest from all his
enemies round about: for his name shall be Solomon [Peaceful],
and I will give peace and quietness unto Israel in his days:
he shall build an house for my name: and he shall be my son,
and I will be his father; and I will establish the throne of his
kingdom over Israel for ever.'"
In Chapter xvii. Jahveh claims that it is he who has subdued and
cut off David's enemies; his long speech is that of a war-god;
but in the xxii. it is the God of Peace who speaks; and in harmony
with this character all the bloodshed by which Solomon's succession
was accompanied, as recorded in the Book of Kings, is suppressed,
and he stands to the day of his death the Prince of Peace. To him
(1 Chron. xxviii., xxix.) from the first all the other sons of David
bow submissively, and the people by a solemn election confirm David's
appointment and make Solomon their king.
Thus, 1 Chron. xvii., which is identical with 2 Sam. vii., clearly
represents a second Chronicler. The hand of the same writer is found
in 1 Chron. xviii., xix., xx., and the chapters partly identical in 2
Samuel, namely viii., x., xi.; the offence of David then being narrated
in 2 Samuel xii. as the wrong done Uriah, whereas in 1 Chron. xxi. the
sin is numbering Israel. The Chroniclers know nothing of the Uriah
and Bathsheba story, but the onomatopoeists may take note of the fact
that David's order was to number Israel "from Beer-sheba unto Dan."
The first ten chapters of 2 Chronicles seem to represent a third
chronicler. Here we find David in the background, and Solomon
completely conventionalised, as the Peaceful Prince of the Golden
Age. All is prosperity and happiness. Solomon even anticipates
the silver millennium: "The king made silver to be in Jerusalem as
stones." It is only when the fourth chronicler begins (2 Chron. x.),
with the succession of Solomon's son Rehoboam, that we are told
anything against Solomon. Then all Israel come to the new king,
saying, "Thy father made our yoke grievous," and he answers, "My
father chastised you with whips, but I with scorpions."
All this is so inconsistent with the accounts in the earlier books
of both David and Solomon, that it is charitable to believe that the
third chronicler had never heard the ugly stories about these two
canonised kings.
In the First Book of Kings, Solomon is made king against the rightful
heir, by an ingenious conspiracy between a wily prophet, Nathan, and
a wily beauty, Bathsheba,--Solomon's mother, whom David had obtained
by murdering her husband.
It may be remembered here that David had by Bathsheba a son named
Nathan (2 Sam. v. 14; 1 Chron. iii. 5), elder brother of Solomon,
from whom Luke traces the genealogy of Joseph, father of Jesus,
while Matthew traces it from Solomon. It appears curious that the
prophet Nathan should have intrigued for the accession of the younger
brother rather than the one bearing his own name. It will be seen,
however, by reference to 2 Samuel xii. 24, that Solomon was the first
legitimate child of David and Bathsheba, the son of their adultery
having died. John Calvin having laid it down very positively that
"if Jesus was not descended from Solomon, he was not the Christ,"
some theologians have resorted to the hypothesis that Nathan married
an ancestress of the Virgin Mary, and that Luke gives her descent,
not that of Joseph; but apart from the fact that Luke (iii. 23)
begins with Joseph, it is difficult to see how the requirement of
Calvin, that Solomon should be the ancestor of Jesus, is met by his
mother's descent from Solomon's brother. It is clear, however, from
2 Sam. xii. 24, 25, that this elder brother of Solomon, Nathan, is a
myth. Otherwise he, and not Solomon, was the lawful heir to the throne
(legitimacy being confined to the sons of David born in Jerusalem),
and Jesus would not have been "born King of the Jews" (Matt, i. 2),
nor fulfilled the Messianic conditions. It is even possible that
Luke wished to escape the implication of illegitimacy by tracing
the descent of Jesus from Solomon's elder brother. But the writer
of 1 Kings i. had no knowledge of the Christian discovery that, in
the order of legal succession to the throne, the sons of David born
before he reigned in Jerusalem were excluded. Adonijah's legal right
of succession was not questioned by David (1 Kings i. 6).
When David was in his dotage and near his end this eldest son (by
Haggith), Adonijah, began to consult leading men about his accession,
but unfortunately for himself, did not summon Nathan. This slighted
"prophet" proposed to Bathsheba that she should go to David and tell
him the falsehood that he (David) had once sworn before Jahveh that
her son Solomon should reign; "and while you are talking," says
Nathan, "I will enter and fulfil" (that was his significant word)
"your declaration." The royal dotard could not gainsay two seemingly
independent witnesses, and helplessly kept the alleged oath. David
announced this oath as his reason,--apparently the only one,--for
appointing Solomon. The prince may be credited with being too young
to participate in this scheme.
Irregularity of succession and of birth in princes appeals to
popular superstition. The legal heir, regularly born, seems to
come by mere human arrangement, but the God-appointed chieftain is
expected in unexpected ways and in defiance of human laws and even
moralities. David, or some one speaking for him, said, "In sin did
my mother conceive me," and the contempt in which he was held by
his father's other children, and his father's keeping him out of
sight till the prophet demanded him (1 Sam. xvi. 11), look as if he,
also, may have been illegitimate. Solomon may have been technically
legitimate, but in any case he was the son of an immoral marriage,
sealed by a husband's blood. The populace would easily see the divine
hand in the elevation of this youth, who seems to have been himself
impressed with the like superstition.
Unfortunately, Solomon received his father's last injunctions as divine
commands. At the very time when David is pictured by the Chronicler
in such a saintly death-bed scene, parting so pathetically with his
people, and giving such unctuous and virtuous last counsels to Solomon,
he is shown by the historian of Kings pouring into his successor's ear
the most treacherous and atrocious directions for the murder of certain
persons; among others, of Shimei, whose life he had sworn should not
be taken. Shimei had once called David what Jahveh also called him,
a man of blood, but afterwards asked his forgiveness. Under a pretence
of forgiveness, David nursed his vengeance through many years, and
Shimei was now a white-haired man. David's last words addressed to
Solomon were these:
"He (Shimei) came down to meet me at Jordan, and I sware to him by
Jahveh, saying, 'I will not put thee to death with the sword.' Now
therefore hold him not guiltless, for thou art a wise man, and
wilt know what thou oughtest to do unto him; and thou shalt bring
his hoar head down to the grave in blood."
Such, according to an admiring annalist, were the last words uttered
by David on earth. He died with a lie in his mouth (for he had sworn
to Shimei, plainly, "Thy life shall not be taken"), and with murder
(personal and vindictive) in his heart. The book opens with a record
that they had tried to revive the aged king by bringing to him a
beautiful damsel; but lust was gone; the only passion that survived
even his lust, and could give one more glow to this "man of blood,"
was vengeance. Two aged men were named by him for death at the hands of
Solomon, who could not disobey, this being the last act of the forty
years of reign of King David. His dying word was "blood." One would
be glad to believe these things mythical, but they are contained in
a record which says:
"David did that which was right in the sight of Jahveh and turned
not aside from anything that he commanded him all the days of
his life, save only in the matter of Uriah the Hittite."
This traditional incident of getting Uriah slain in order to
appropriate his wife, made a deep impression on the historian of
Samuel, and suspicious pains are taken (2 Sam. xii.) to prove that the
illegitimate son of David and Bathsheba was "struck by Jahveh" for his
parents' sin, and that Solomon was born only after the marriage. Even
if the youth was legitimate, the adherents of the king's eldest son,
Adonijah, would not fail to recall the lust and murder from which
Solomon sprang, though the populace might regard these as signs of
Jahveh's favor. In the coronation ode (Psalm ii.) the young king is
represented as if answering the Legitimists who spoke of his birth
not only from an adulteress, but one with a foreign name:
"I will proclaim the decree:
The Lord said unto me, 'Thou art my son;
This day have I begotten thee.'"
(It is probable that the name Jahveh was inserted in this song in
place of Elohim, and in several other phrases there are indications
that the original has been tampered with.) The lines--
"Kiss the son lest he be angry
And ye perish straightway."
and others, may have originated the legendary particulars of plots
caused by Solomon's accession, recorded in the Book of Kings, but
at any rate the emphatic claim to his adoption by God as His son, by
the anointing received at coronation, suggests some trouble arising
out of his birth. There is also a confidence and enthusiasm in the
language of the court laureate, as the writer of Psalm ii. appears
to have been, which conveys an impression of popular sympathy.
It is not improbable that the superstition about illegitimacy, as
under some conditions a sign of a hero's heavenly origin, may have
had some foundation in the facts of heredity. In times when love or
even passion had little connexion with any marriage, and none with
royal marriages, the offspring of an amour might naturally manifest
more force of character than the legitimate, and the inherited sensual
impulses, often displayed in noble energies, might prove of enormous
importance in breaking down an old oppression continued by an automatic
legitimacy of succession.
In Talmudic books (Moed Katon, Vol. 9, col. 2, and Midrash Rabbah,
ch. 15) it is related that when Solomon was conveying the ark into the
temple, the doors shut themselves against him of their own accord. He
recited twenty-four psalms, but they opened not. In vain he cried,
"Lift up your heads, O ye gates!" But when he prayed, "O Lord God,
turn not Thy face from Thine anointed; remember the mercies of David
thy servant" (2 Chron. vi. 42), the gates flew open. "Then the enemies
of David turned black in the face, for all knew that God had pardoned
David's transgression with Bathsheba." This legend curiously ignores
1 Chron. xxii., which shows that Jahveh had prearranged Solomon's
birth and name, and had adopted him before birth. It is one of many
rabbinical intimations that David, Bathsheba, Uriah, and Solomon, had
become popular divinities,--much like Vulcan, Venus, Mars,--and as such
relieved from moral obligations. Jewish theology had to accommodate
itself ethically to this popular mythology, and did so by a theory
of divine forgiveness; but really the position of Hebrew, as well as
Christian, orthodoxy was that lustful David and Bathsheba were mere
puppets in the divine plan, and their actions quite consistent with
their being souls after Jahveh's own heart.