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SOLOMON, ODES OF

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Originally appearing in Volume V25, Page 365 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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SOLOMON, ODES OF , a collection of 42 See also:hymns, probably dating from the end of the 1st See also:century, known to the See also:early See also:Christian See also:Church (as is proved by the quotations and comments in the 3rd century gnostic See also:book, Pistis See also:Sophia, and a See also:short See also:extract in the Institutes of Lactantius). They were recovered by Dr Rendel See also:Harris in 1908 from a 16th-century See also:Syriac See also:manuscript (containing also the See also:Psalms of Solomon, see below) in his See also:possession. The first, second, and See also: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 See also: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 See also:loo. They contain few traces of the New Testament, and the words " See also:gospel " and " church " are not found. Here and there a Johannine See also:atmosphere is detected, though not sufficiently to justify the See also:assumption that the author knew the. writer. of the See also:Fourth Gospel. References to the See also:life and teaching, of See also:Christ are rare, though the Virgin See also:Birth is alluded to in. See also:Ode 19 in a passage marked by legendary embellishment, and the descent into Hades is spoken of in quite the apocryphal See also:style in Ode 42.

These odes are probably among the latest in the book.` There are no clear allusions to See also:

baptism and none at all to the eucharistic celebration. One passage speaks of ministers (perhaps-- = deacons) who are entrusted with the See also:water of life to See also:hand to others; the word " See also:priest " occurs once, at the beginning of Ode 2o, " I am a priest of the See also: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 See also:Greek, vary in See also:execution and spiritual See also:tone, but are generally characterized by a buoyant feeling of Christian joy. See also:Harnack considers that they See also: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 See also:link between the piety and See also: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 (See also:Leipzig, 1910) ; The Times (See also:April 7, 1910) ; W. E. See also:Barnes, in Journ.' of Theol. Studies, xi. 615, and The Expositor (See also:July 191o) ; F.

See also:

Spitta, in Zeitschrift See also:fur N.T. Wissenschaft, xi. 193.

End of Article: SOLOMON, ODES OF

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