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The Psalms of Solomon is a Jewish writing, generally included in collections of Old Testament Pseudepigrapha.

Overview

The eighteen Psalms of Solomon, is a pseudepigraphic work written in the mid-to later first century B.C.E. A superficial survey of the composition shows it to consist of eighteen psalms written in imitation of the biblical psalter, and ascribed to King Solomon. The genre of these psalms ranges from lamentations, entreaties, and thanksgiving. The collection portrays a terrible calamity inflicted by an anonymous enemy upon Jerusalem. God decreed that Jerusalem would succumb to this foreign ruler because of its iniquities. Davidic usurpers, who controlled the Temple, were marked by God for special punishment, because of their excessive sins. Despite these calamities, the community of the psalmist managed to survive. The collection ends with the expectation of a Davidic Messiah, who would rule in Jerusalem, and punish both the Jewish and Gentile sinners.

Manuscript tradition

Synopsis

The Psalms of Solomon in Scholarship (History of research)

The Psalms of Solomon was not known until its publication in 1626 by Juan Luis de la Cerda. Since de la Cerda's publication, scholars have sought to identify the numerous veiled allusions to historical personages scattered throughout the collection. In 1847, F.K. Movers first suggested that the background of most of these psalms was Pompey's invasion of Jerusalem in 63 B.C.E. Julius Wellhausen, in his work Die Pharisäer und die Sadducäer expanded upon Mover's thesis, and proposed that the Psalms of Solomon represented Jewish Pharisaism at the time of Pompey's arrival. This theory was further expanded upon by a succession of writers in various critical editions of the psalms. In 1891, Ryle and James were so certain of the Pompeian dating and Pharisaic attribution of the Psalms of Solomon, that they titled their commentary on the collection, The Psalms of the Pharisees. This work, still the only English commentary on the Psalms of Solomon, continues to dominant contemporary scholarship.

In the 2000s, Kenneth Atkinson proposed that our present corpus of Psalms of Solomon was the product of a later redactor, who collected a number of psalms containing the theological reflections of a Jewish community to the changing political situation within Jerusalem. The earliest of these psalms date just prior to Pompey's arrival in 63 BCE, and the latest document Herod the Great's siege of Jerusalem in 37 BCE. Once the tenuous nature of the Pharisaical connection is recognized, then these psalms can properly function as a witness to the great diversity that existed in Palestinian Judaism, within Jerusalem, during the latter portion of the first century BCE.

The Psalms of Solomon in Fiction

Related categories

• Solomon / Messiah

External links

Online translations

• Internet Sacred Texts Archive, and Wesley Center Online, by G. Buchanan Gray (1913) <English>

Introductions

• Wikipedia
• Jewish Encyclopedia (1906)

References (major articles)