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Encyclopedia Britannica



SOLOMON, ODES OF

This article appears in Volume V25, Page 365 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: SIV-SOU
SOLOMON, ODES OF , a collection of 42 hymns, probably dating from the end of the 1st century, known to the early Christian
Church
  (as is proved by the quotations and comments in the 3rd century gnostic book, Pistis
Sophia
 , and a short extract in the Institutes of Lactantius). They were recovered by Dr Rendel Harris in 1908 from a 16th-century Syriac
manuscript
  (containing also the
Psalms
  of Solomon, see below) in his possession. The first, second, and
part
  of the, third odes are missing, but the first has been restored from the Pistis
Sophia
 . Of their authorship nothing is known, " Solomon " being a recognized pseudonym. While there are thoughts and expressions which lend themselves to gnostic use, there is nothing in the odes which is of distinctively gnostic origin. Many of them, indeed, are unmistakably Christian, and the writer of the Pistis Sophia seems to have regarded them as almost if not quite canonical, a fact which secures at latest a 2nd-century origin. Dr Harris indeed would date several of them between A.D. 75 and loo. They contain few traces of the New Testament, and the words " gospel " and "
church
  " are not found. Here and there a Johannine atmosphere is detected, though not sufficiently to justify the assumption that the author knew the. writer. of the Fourth Gospel. References to the
life
  and teaching, of Christ are rare, though the Virgin
Birth
  is alluded to in. Ode 19 in a passage marked by legendary embellishment, and the descent into Hades is spoken of in quite the apocryphal style in Ode 42. These odes are probably among the latest in the book.` There are no clear allusions to
baptism
  and none at all to the eucharistic celebration. One passage speaks of ministers (perhaps-- = deacons) who are entrusted with the water of
life
  to hand to others; the word " priest " occurs once, at the beginning of Ode 2o, " I am a priest of the Lord, and to Him I do priestly service, and to Him I offer the sacrifices of His thought," The odes, which are perhaps the product of a school of writers, and were originally written in Greek, vary in execution and spiritual tone, but are generally characterized by a buoyant feeling of Christian joy. Harnack considers that they form a Jewish Grundschrift, with a number of Christian interpolations; only two are " purely Christian," while several " colourless
ones, are more likely Jewish. He finds in them a link between the piety and theology of the Testaments of the Twelve Pattiarchs and that of the Johannine gospel and epistles.
See J. Rendel Harris, The Odes and
Psalms
  of Solomon (1909) ;, An Early Christian Psalter (1909) ; Joh. Flemming and A. Harnack, Ein judisch-christliches Psalmbuch aus dem ersten Jahrhundert (
Leipzig
 , 1910) ; The Times (April 7, 1910) ; W. E.
Barnes
 , in Journ.' of Theol. Studies, xi. 615, and The Expositor (July 191o) ; F. Spitta, in Zeitschrift fur N.T. Wissenschaft, xi. 193.


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