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497 RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA

himself in the city during the reign of Solomon. It is thus evident that while Solomon held the kingdom together, it was not without difficulty or even without some diminution of territory. Possibly, however, Solomon attached less importance to protecting his frontiers than to strengthening Israel within. He built strong fortifications, prepared material of war, and kept his supplies in the best possible condition. Above all, he was successful in introducing the horse for cavalry and chariots.

Solomon seems to have possessed high talents for organization and finance, and his justice became proverbial. The entire land of Israel was divided into twelve administrative districts, each required to pay the expenses of the royal court for a month. There likewise seemed to have been special districts for public works, one of the chief officials of the kingdom being Adoniram, master of the levy. Hand in hand with this organization doubtless went the final absorption of the Canasnites, whom Solomon compelled to share in the levies and taxes of the Israelites. Besides introducing the horse into Israel, Solomon extended his commercial relations to the Sabeans of South Arabia and to Ophir (q.v.).

Solomon's financial talents seem to have been exhausted in acquiring vast wealth. He was even obliged, toward the end of his reign, to pawn twenty cities, while taxation was so heavy that discontent appeared in the revolt against his successor. Solo mon had never learned in the stern school of his father. He grew up as a rich heir in the splendor of a royal court, inheriting certain despotic tendencies and weaknesses, and inclined to prodigality, dis play, and sensuality. In addition to the fortresses and the luxurious court, which included 700 wives and 300 concubines, his palaces and the Temple (q.v.) required an immense outlay. With the help of Syrian artists he transformed a large part of the hill of Zion in the eastern part of Jerusalem into a sort of city of palaces. Like his riches, the wisdom of Solomon was proverbial (cf. I Kings iv. 29 sqq.); 3,000 proverbs and more than 1,000 songs were ascribed to him; and he was said to be the author of Ps. lxxii. and exxvii., as well as of the book of Proverbs (q.v.). (R. KrrrEL.)

BIBLIOGRAPBY: The sources are I Kings i-xi and I Chron. six. 22-II Chron. i.-ia. Consult further: The works on the history of Israel by Milman, Stanley, F. Newman. Ewald, Stade. KShler. Kiostermann, Cornill, Kittel. McCurdy, Kent, and others named under ARAB or ISRAEL, Hi eTon: op; G. Weil, The Bible, the Koran, and the Talmud, or, Biblical Legends o! the Mussulmans, pp. 200-248, London, 1848; G. Meiman, Salomon, eon rqgns, sca krita, Paris, 1890; M. Griinbaum, Neue Beitrdpe zur semitischen Sapenkunde, pp. 190 sqq., Berlin, 1893; idem, Gesammelts AuJadtze zur Sprach- and Sopenkunde, pp. 22 sqq., 187 eqq., ib. 1901; F. Vigouroua, La Bible et lea dkouvertes modernes, iii. 253-405. 8th ed., Paris, 1898; B. W. Baoon, Solomon in Tradition and Fad, in New World, 1898, pp. 212 sqq.; R. Frirber, Minip Salomon in den Tradition, Vienna, 1902; C. F. Kent. Student's Old Testament, ii. 14-18, 185199, New York, 1905; G. Beer, Saul, David, Salomo, Tijbingen, IW8; DB iv. 559-589; EB ii. 2235..,38 iv, 4880-90; JB, zi. 438-448; Vigouxoua, Duaionnaire, faro. zav.1382-9s.

SOLOMON BAR ISAAC. See RAsHi.

SOLOMON, ODES OF: The Odes of Solomon, which, until recently, were, except for certain X.-32

Sohm 13olomau

fragments and quotations, altogether lost, were commonly connected in the tradition of Christian literature with the Psalms of Solomon (see PBEUDEPIGRAPHA, II., 1). In this grouping of material, the ancient atichometries gave them a place, more or less honorable, among the subcanonical literature. How near they came to actual ecclesiastical acceptance could only be guessed by analogy, from the companion volume to which they were attached. The stichometries, however, gave a rough idea of the compass of the book, from the point of view of a librarian or bookseller, from which it was easy to infer that a lost book of nearly the same compass as the Psalms of Solomon was once in circulation in Christian churches. In the next place, quotations professing to come from the missing book were recovered from two quarters: first, there was a passage relating to the birth of Christ from a virgin, quoted by Lactantius (De div. inat., iv. 12; Eng. tranal., ANF, vii. 110), which he said was from the nineteenth ode of Solomon. Second, there was a series of Odes of Solomon quoted in a Coptic book, a chief monument of Gnostic literature, which goes under the name of Pistis Sophia. These odes and fragments of odes were turned back into Greek and published by Ryle and James at the close of their edition of the Psalms of Solomon.

The book itself, so long lost, was recovered by J. Rendel Harris in a Syrian version, Jan. 4, 1909; it had been reposing along with a number of other Syriac fragments on his bookshelves, apparently for a couple of years or more, the manuscript in question having come from the neighborhood of the Tigris. When the identification was made, it appeared that the manuscript, a late paper one of no extrinsic value, contained both the Odes and the Psalms of Solomon; it was slightly mutilated at the beginning, so that odes one and two and a part of ode three were missing; at the other end the eighteenth of the Psalms of Solomon was gone and part of the seventeenth. The nineteenth ode contained the quotation which Laatantius gives in a Latin translation; all the matter quoted by the Pistis Sophia was also identified, and in addition a part of the first ode was also with some probability detected in the Coptic text. So that, with a very, slight deduction for the imperfection of the manuscript, the complete book was recovered and restored to its place in Christian literature. The forty-two odes thus recovered are of rare beauty and spirituality; with possibly an exception or two, they come from a single hand, and represent a hitherto unknown department of early Christian literature. They were produced in the latter part of the first century or the early part of the second. The writer was a person of Gentile extraction, who had become attached to a Church of Judeo.Christians, probably in Palestine. He did not, however, accept circumcision or keep the Sabbath, occupying exactly the position which Justin Martyr did on those

points, which he says he learned from an ancient Christian to whom he owed his conversion. So far as can be judged from the hints in the odes (it must be remembered that a Psalter is not the easiest place from which to extract history), he knew Jesus as the Messiah or Christ, but did not know the Synoptic