Solomon and Solomonic Literature

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 Solomon 1 The Judgment of Solomon 12 The Wives of Solomon 24 Solomon’s Idolatry 30 Solomon and the Satans 34 Solomon in the Hexateuch 41 Solomonic Antijahvism 51 The Book of Proverbs and the Avesta 59 The Song of Songs 89 Koheleth (Ecclesiastes) 104 Wisdom (Ecclesiasticus) 111 The Wisdom of Solomon 118 Epistle to the Hebrews (A Sequel to Sophia Solomontos) 129 Solomon Melchizedek 150 The Pauline Dehumanization of Jesus 164 The Mythological Mantle of Solomon Fallen on Jesus 176 The Heir of Solomon’s Godhead 194 The Last Solomon 207 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…