Solomon And Solomonic Literature Part 11

"The evil man cursing Satan is but cursing himself."

"The bars of Wisdom shall be thy fortress, her chains thy robe of honour."

About the rendering of xli. 15 there is some doubt, and I give this conjecture:

Better the (ignorant) that hideth his folly, than the (learned) who hideth his wisdom.

In the Bible which belonged to the historian Gibbon, loaned by the late General Meredith Read to the Gibbon exhibition in London, I observed a pencil mark around these sentences in "Wisdom":

"He that buildeth his house with other men's money, is like one that gathereth stones for the tomb of his own burial."

"He that is not wise will not be taught, but there is a wisdom that multiplieth bitterness."

To Jesus Ben Sira we may, I believe, ascribe the following:

"Glorifying G.o.d, exalt him as far as your thought can reach, yet you will never attain to his height: praising him, put forth all your powers, be not weary, yet ever will they fall short. Who hath seen him that he can tell us? Who can describe him as he is? Let us still be rejoicing in him, for we shall not search him out: he is great beyond his works."

This has an interesting correspondence with the beautiful rapture of the Persian Sadi:

"They who pretend to be informed are ignorant, for they who have known him have not recovered their senses. O thou who towerest above the heights of imagination, thought, or conjecture, surpa.s.sing all that has been related, and excelling all that we have heard or read, the banquet is ended, the congregation is dismissed, and life draws to a close, and we still rest in our first encomium of thee!"

To Jesus Ben Sira may be safely ascribed the pa.s.sages that bear witness to the pressure of problems which, though old, appear in new forms under h.e.l.lenic influences. They grow urgent and threaten the foundations of Jahvism. It was no longer sufficient to say that Jahveh rewarded virtue and piety, and punished vice and impiety in this world. Job had demanded the evidence for this, and the centuries had brought none. Job was awarded some recompense in this world, but that happy experience did not attend other virtuous sufferers.

The doctrine of one writer in "Wisdom" is simply predestination. Paul's potter-and-clay similitude is antic.i.p.ated, and the Parsi dualism curiously adapted to Jahvist monotheism: "Good is set against evil, life against death, the G.o.dly against the sinner and the sinner against the G.o.dly: look through all the works of the Most High and there are two and two, one against another." But the liberal son of Sira is more optimist: "All things are double, one against another, but he hath made nothing imperfect: one thing establisheth the good of another." Freedom of the will is a.s.serted: "Say not, he hath caused me to err, for he hath no need of the evildoer. He made man from the beginning and left him in the hand of his (own) counsel.... He hath set fire and water before thee, stretch forth thy hand to whichever thou wilt. Before man is the living and the not-living, and whichever he liketh shall be given him."

But the doctrine of human free agency is pregnant with polemics; it has so been in Christian history, as is proved by the Pelagian, Arminian, Jesuit, and Wesleyan movements. There are indications in Ben Sira's work that the foundations of Jahvism were threatened by a moral scepticism. His own celebration of the Fathers was enough to bring into dreary contrast the tragedies of his own time and glories of the Past, when "Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under his vine and fig-tree, from Dan even to Beer-sheba, all the days of Solomon." What shelter now in the divine fig-tree, which could bear nothing but legendary or predictive leaves? The curse on the barren tree was near at hand when Jesus Ben Sira uttered his pathetic complaint, veiled in prayer:

"Have mercy on us, O Lord G.o.d of all, and regard us! Send thy fear on all the nations that seek thee not; lift thy hand against them, let them see thy power! As thou wast (of old) sanctified in us before them, be thou (now) magnified among them before us; and let them know thee, as we have known thee,--that there is, O G.o.d, no G.o.d but thou alone! Show new signs, more strange wonders; glorify thy hand and thy right arm, that they may publish thy wondrous works! Raise up indignation, pour out wrath, remove the adversary, destroy the enemy: hasten! remember thy covenant, and let them witness thy wonderful works!"

CHAPTER XII.

THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON.

Somewhat more than a century after Jesus Ben Sira's work, came an answer to his prayer, not from above but from beneath, in the so-called "Psalter of Solomon." This is no wisdom book, and need not detain us. It is mainly a hash--one may say a mess--made up out of the Psalms; and though some of the allusions, apparently to Pompey and others, may possess value in other connexions, the work need only be mentioned here as an indication of the fate which Solomon met at the hands of Jahvism. The name of the Wisest of his race on this vulgar production is like the doggerel on Shakespeare's tomb, and the fling at England's greatest poet written on the tomb of his daughter,--"Wise to salvation was good Mistriss Hall," etc.

Before pa.s.sing, it may be remarked that the obvious allusions to Christ in this Psalter seem clearly spurious, and for one I cannot regard as other than a late interpolation verse 24 of Psalter-Psalm xvii.: "Behold, O G.o.d, and raise up unto them their king, the Son of David, in the time which thou, O G.o.d, knowest, that he may reign over Israel thy servant." There is nothing in the literature of the time before or after that would warrant the concession to this ranting Salvationist (B. C. 70-60) of an idea which would then have been original. The verse has the accent of a Second Adventist a century later. The t.i.tle "Son of David" occurs even in the New Testament but sixteen times.

The Psalter is in spirit thoroughly Jahvist, narrow, hard, without one ray of Solomonic wisdom or wit. It may fairly be regarded as the sepulchre of the wise man whose name it bears (though not in its text). Jahvism has here triumphed over the whole cult of Wisdom.

But Solomon is not to rest there. He is again evoked, though not yet in his ancient secular greatness, by the next work that claims our attention.

This last of the Wisdom Books bears the heading "Wisdom of Solomon"

(Sophia Solomontos) and gives unmistakable identifications of the King, though herein also the name "Solomon" appears only in the t.i.tle. Perhaps the writer may have wished to avoid exciting the ridicule or resentment of the Solomonists by plainly connecting the name of their founder with a retractation of all the secularism and the heresies anciently a.s.sociated with him. The aristocratic Sadducees, who believed not in immortality, derived their name from Solomon's famous chaplain, Zadok.

This "Wisdom of Solomon" probably appeared not far from the first year of our era. It is written in almost cla.s.sical Greek, is full of striking and poetic interpretations and spiritualisations of Jewish legends, and transfused with a piety at once warm and mystical. Solomon is summoned much in the way that the "Wandering Jew," Ahasuerus, is called up in Sh.e.l.ley's "Prometheus," yet not quite allegorically, to testify concerning the Past, and concerning the mysteries of the invisible world. He has left behind his secularist Proverbs and his worldly wisdom; but though he now rises as a prophet of otherworldliness, not a word is uttered inconsistent with his having been a saint from the beginning, albeit "chastised" and "proved." In fact he gives his spiritual autobiography, which is that of a Son of G.o.d wise and "undefiled" from childhood. His burden is to warn the kings and judges of the world of the blessedness that awaits the righteous,--the misery that awaits the unrighteous,--beyond the grave.

The work impresses me as having been written by one who had long been an enthusiastic Solomonist, but who had been spiritually revolutionised by attaining the new belief of immortality. It does not appear as if the apparition of Solomon was to this writer a simple imagination. Solomon seems to be alive, or rather as if never dead. "For thou (G.o.d) hast power of life and death: thou leadest to the gates of Hades, and bringest up again." "The giving heed unto her (Wisdom's) laws is the a.s.surance of incorruption; and incorruption maketh us near unto G.o.d: therefore the desire of Wisdom bringeth to a Kingdom."

The Jewish people idealised Solomon's reign long before they idealised the man himself; and indeed he had to reach his halo under personified epithets derived from his fame,--as "Melchizedek," and "Prince of Peace." The nation sighed for the restoration of his splendid empire, but could not describe their Coming Man as a returning Solomon, because the priests and prophets,--a gentry little respected by the Wise Man,--steadily ascribed all the national misfortunes to the shrines built to other deities than Jahveh by the royal Citizen of the World. Thus grew such prophetic indirections as "the House of David,"

"Jesse's branch," and finally "Son of David."

But this idea of the returning hero does not appear to have been original with any Semitic people; it is first found among them in the Oriental book of Job, who longs to sleep in some cavern for ages, then reappear, and, even if his flesh were shrivelled, find that his good name was vindicated (xiv.). This idea of the Sleeping Hero (which is traced in many examples in my work on The Wandering Jew) appears to have gained its earliest expression in the legend of King Yima, in Persia,--the original of such sleepers as Barbarossa and King Arthur, as well as of the legendary Enoch, Moses, and Elias, who were to precede or attend the revived Son of David. Solomon, whose name probably gave Jerusalem the peaceful half of its name (Salem) would no doubt have been central among the "Undying Ones" had it not been for the Parliament of Religions he set up in that city. But he had to wait a thousand years for his honorable fame to awaken.

In the "Wisdom of Solomon" the Queen of Sheba is also recalled into life. She is, as Renan pointed out, transfigured in the personified Wisdom, and her gifts become mystical. "All good things together came to me with her," and "Wisdom goeth before them: and I knew not that she was the mother of them." She is amiable, beautiful, and gave him his knowledge:

"All such things as are secret or manifest, them I knew. For Wisdom, which is the worker of all things, taught me: for in her is an understanding spirit, holy, one only, manifold; subtle, lively, clear, undefiled, plain, not subject to hurt, loving the thing that is good, quick, which cannot be letted, ready to do good, kind to man, steadfast, sure, free from care, having all power, overseeing all things, and pervading all intellectual, pure, and most subtle spirits. For Wisdom is more moving than motion itself; she pa.s.seth and goeth through all things by reason of her pureness. For she is the breath of the power of G.o.d, and a pure influence flowing from the glory of the Almighty: therefore can no impure thing fall into her. For she is the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the power of G.o.d, and the image of his goodness. And alone, she can do all things; herself unchanged, she maketh all things new; and in all ages, entering into holy souls, she maketh them intimates of G.o.d, and prophets. For G.o.d loveth only him who dwelleth with Wisdom. She is more beautiful than the sun, and above all the order of stars; compared with the light she is found before it,--for after light cometh night, but evil shall not prevail against Wisdom." (vii. 21-30.)

In Sophia Solomontos Solomon relates his espousal of Wisdom, who sat beside the throne of G.o.d (ix. 4). But there remains with G.o.d a detective Wisdom called the Holy Spirit. Wisdom and the Holy Spirit have different functions. "Thy counsel who hath known except thou give Wisdom, and send thy Holy Spirit from above?" This verse (ix. 17) is followed by two chapters (x., xi.) relating the work of Wisdom through past ages as a Saviour. But then comes an account of the severe chastening functions of the Holy Spirit. "For thine incorruptible Spirit is in all things (i. e., nothing is concealed from her), therefore chastenest thou them by little and little that offend," etc. (xii. 1, 2.)

There is here a slight variation in the historic development of the Spirit of G.o.d, and one so pregnant with results that it may be well to refer to some of the earlier Hebrew conceptions. The Spirit of G.o.d described in Genesis i. 2, as "brooding" over the waters was evidently meant to represent a detached agent of the deity. The legend is obviously related to that of the dove going forth over the waters of the deluge. The dove probably acquired its symbolical character as a messenger between earth and heaven from the marvellous powers of the carrier pigeon--powers well known in ancient Egypt--it also appears that its cooing was believed to be an echo on earth of the voice of G.o.d. [24] We have already seen (viii.) that Wisdom, when first personified, was identified with this "brooding" spirit over the surface of the waters, and also that in a second (Jahvist) personification she is a severe and reproving agent. But in the second verse of Genesis there is a darkness on the abyss, and both darkness and abyss were personified. In the rigid development of monotheism all of these beings were necessarily regarded as agents of Jahveh--monopolist of all powers. We thus find such accounts as that in 1 Samuel 16, where the Spirit of Jahveh departed from Saul and an evil Spirit from Jahveh troubled him.

Although the Spirit of G.o.d was generally supposed to convey miraculous knowledge, especially of future events, and superior skill, it is not, I believe, in any book earlier than Sophia Solomontos definitely ascribed the function of a detective. There is in Ecclesiastes (x. 20) a pa.s.sage which suggests the carrier: "Curse not the King, no, not in thy thought; and curse not the rich even in thy bedchamber; for a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter." [25] This was evidently in the mind of the writer of Sophia Solomontos in the following verses:

Wisdom is a loving Spirit, and will not (cannot?) acquit a blasphemer of his words: for G.o.d is a witness of his reins, and a true beholder of his heart, and a hearer of his tongue; for the Spirit of the Lord filleth the world, and that which containeth all things hath knowledge of the voice; therefore he that speaketh unrighteous things cannot be hid, neither shall vengeance when it punisheth, pa.s.s by him. For inquisition shall be made into the counsels of the unG.o.dly; the sound of his words shall come unto the Lord for the disclosure of his wickedness, the ear of jealousy heareth all things, and the sound even of murmurings is not secret."

Here we have the origin of the "unpardonable sin." The Holy Spirit detects and informs, Jahveh avenges, and if the offence is blasphemy, Wisdom, the Saviour, cannot acquit (as the "Loving Spirit" of G.o.d it is for her ultra vires). This detective Holy Spirit appears to be an evolution from both Wisdom and Satan the Accuser, in Job a Son of G.o.d. By a.s.sociating with Solomon on earth, Wisdom was without the severe holiness essential to Jahvist conceptions of divine government; in other words, personified Wisdom, whose "delight was with the sons of men" (Prov. viii. 31) was too humanized to fulfil the conditions necessary for upholding the temple at a time when penal sanctions were withdrawn from the priesthood. A celestial spy was needed, and also an uncomfortable Sheol, if the ancient ordinances and sacrifices were to be preserved at all under the rule of Roman liberty, and amid the cosmopolitan conditions prevailing at Jerusalem, and still more at Alexandria. [26]

With regard to Wisdom herself, there is a sentence which requires notice, especially as no unweighed word is written in the work under notice. It is said, "In that she is conversant with G.o.d, she magnifieth her n.o.bility; yea, the Lord of all things himself loved her." (viii. 3). [27] This seems to be the germ of Philo's idea of Wisdom as the Mother: "And she, receiving the seed of G.o.d, with beautiful birth-pangs brought forth this world, His visible Son, only and well-beloved." The writer of Sophia Solomontos is very careful to be vague in speculations of this kind, while suggesting inferences with regard to them. Thus, alluding to Moses before Pharaoh, he says, "She (Wisdom) entered into the servant of the Lord, and withstood dreadful kings in wonders and signs" (x. 16), but leaves us to mere conjecture as to whether he (the writer) still had Wisdom in mind when writing (xvii. 13) of the failure of these enchantments and the descent of the Almighty Word, for the destruction of the first-born:

"For while all things are quiet silence, and that night was in the midst of her swift course, thine Almighty Word leaped down from Heaven out of thy Royal throne, as a fierce man of war into the midst of a land of destruction; and brought thine unfeigned commandment as a sharp sword, and standing up filled all things with death; and it touched the heaven, but it stood upon the earth." [28]

The Word in this place (ho pantodynamos sou logos) is clearly reproduced in the Epistle to the Hebrews (iv. 12). "The Word of G.o.d is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword;" and the same military metaphor accompanies this "Word" into Revelation xix. 13. This continuity of metaphor has apparently been overlooked by Alford (Greek Testament, vol. iv., p. 226) who regards the use of the phrase "Word of G.o.d" (ho logos tou theou) as linking Revelation to the author of the fourth Gospel, whereas in this Gospel Logos is never followed by "of G.o.d," while it is so followed in Hebrews iv. 12.

This evolution of the "Word" is clear. In the "Wisdom of Solomon"

Wisdom is the creative Word and the Saviour. The Word leaping down from the divine throne and bearing the sword of vengeance is more like the son of the celestial counterpart of Wisdom, namely, the detective Holy Spirit (called in i. 5 "the Holy Spirit of Discipline"). But in the era we are studying, all words by able writers were living things, and were two-edged swords, and long after they who wrote them were dead went on with active and sundering work undreamed of by those who first uttered them.

The Zoroastrian elements which we remarked in Jesus Ben Sira's "Wisdom" are even more p.r.o.nounced in the "Wisdom of Solomon." The Persian wors.h.i.+ppers are so mildly rebuked (xiii.) for not pa.s.sing beyond fire and star to the "origin of beauty," that one may suppose the author, probably an Alexandrian, must have had friends among them. At any rate his conception of a resplendent G.o.d is Mazdean, his all-seeing Holy Spirit is the Parsi "Anahita," and his Wisdom is Armaiti, the "loving spirit" on earth, the saviour of men. [29]

The opposing kingdoms of Ahuramazda and Angromainyu, and especially Zoroaster's original division of the universe into "the living and the not-living," are reflected in the "Wisdom of Solomon," i. 13-16:

"G.o.d made not death: neither hath he pleasure in the destruction of the living. He created all things that they might have their being; and the generations of the world were healthful; and there (was) no poison of destruction in them, nor (any) kingdom of death on the earth: (for righteousness is immortal): but unG.o.dly men with their deeds and words evoked Death to them: when they thought to have it their friend they consumed to naught, and made a covenant with Death, being fit to take sides with it."