PSALMS OF SOLOMON.— These Psalms are eighteen in number, ami were ])r<)bahly written in the 1st cent. it. (J. It is doubted whether they are even indirectly cited in the NT ; but both the language and the thought in them are of import- ance for a ccimiilete study of the Apostolic Age.
1. MSS and YSS.— It is generally admitted and is inactically certain that these I'salms were originally written in Hebrew ; but not even a fragment of any Hebrew MS of them, nor any Hebrew quotation from them, exists. The MSS in which the Psalms have survived are (1) Greek, and ('2) Syriac. The Syriac is a secondary version, made from the Greek ; but the (jreek is jnobably a direct version from the lost Hebrew original.
Eight Greek MSS are now known. Of these the earliest (H) was written in the 10th or 11th cent., the latest in 1419, the rest in the 11th to the 14th centuries. The first edition of the Greek text was published in 16'2G by John Louis de la Cerda ; it was printed from a faulty copy of a MS which is now in Vienna (V) and which is derived from H. Later editions of the Psalms, down to and including that of Ryle and James in 1891, also rested entirely on H, or MSS derived from it. A more accurate text became possible when use could be made of other MSS, especially R (repro- duced in vol. iii. of Swete's Old Testament in Greek) and J, which, though written later, were inde- pendent of H and in many respects superior to it. A critical te.xt based on the eight known MSS was published in 1895 by Oscar von Gebhardt.
The Syriac Version hrst became known in 1909, when Rendel Harris published the Syriac text from a nearly complete MS which came into his possession ' from the neighbourhood of the Tigris.' This MS is probably no older than the 16th or 17th century. Subsequently a fragment of another MS of the Syriac text was found in the Cambriilge University Library, and yet another and much earlier (incomplete) MS in the British Museum.
The Syriac MS edited by Rendel Harris is defective both at the beginning and at the end, and title and colophon are consequently missing ; the separate psalms are numbered, but are « ithout titles. The same is true of the more ancient British Museum MS described by Burkitt (see Literature). A general title to the whole collec- tion occurs only in the Greek MSS L, H which repre- sent a late stage in the textual history. On the other hand, in most of the Greek MSS, including R and J, nearly every individual psalm is entitled ' of Solomon,' rif Za\oiij.Jiv, with which we may compare the rtf AavflS in the LXX version of the canonical Psalter. (For details, von Gebhardt's textual apparatus and his remarks on p. 47 f. should be consulted ; see also E. A. Abbott, Light on the Gospel from an Ancient Poet, 191'2, pp. 1-7.)
But for the connexion of Solomon's name with these Psalms we can pass behind the MSS. They originally stood in the Codex Alexandrinus (5th cent. A.i;).) of the Bible ; and, though the jiart which contained them has perished, the entry in the table of contents or catalogue at the begin- ning of the Codex survives and reads : ' Psalms of Solomon xvill.' This entry constitutes the earliest direct external evidence not merely of the associa- tion of Solomon's name with the Psalms, but of the existence of the Psalms them.selves.
Rather earlier indirect external evidence of the existence of the P.salms has sometimes been sought elsewhere ; but it is at least doubtful whether the
288
PSALMS OF SOLOMON
PSALMS UF SOLOiMOX
fifty-ninth canon of the Council of Laodicea (c. A.D. 3G0), when it directs that ' private psalms (I'Siuncoi)? ^aX/iovs) are not to be read in tlie church,' and a similarly vague reference in Ambrose, refer to the Fealms of Solomon ; and it is now certain that the OUes of Solomon mentioned in the Pistis Sojihia (k. A.D. 25U) and by Lactantius (4th cent.) are not these Psalms, but a dillerent set of poems, which actually precede the 18 Psalms in Harris's Syriac MS. ;
The inclusion of these Psalms originally in the Codex Ale.xandrinus, and perhtaps, too, in the Codex Sinaiticus, the association of them in most of tlie eight Greek MSS in which they now survive with other Solomonic works, canonical and apocryphal — the Psalms commonly standing between Wisdom and Eccle.siasticus — indicate tlie position which they occupied in the early history of the Church j but the ]iaucity of references to them and (juota- tions from them shows at the same time that they proved neither very attractive nor very influential : they probably owed their preservation to the fact that they bore the name of Solomon.
2. Contents. — The chief contents of the Psalms may be briefly indicated as follows :
Ps 1. — Suddenly, in the midst of prosperity, threatened witli war and assault, Sion, confident in her righteousness, had appealed to God ; but closer examination had convinced her that secret sins, surpassing those of the heathen, had been com- mitted, and the sanctuary of God polluted.
Ps 2. — Foreigners have shattered the walls of Jerusalem with a battering-ram, and treated God's altar profanely. This and the captivity of many Jews that followed seem to the writer to be the punishment meted out by God for the previous pro- fanation of the sacrifices by some of the Jews, ' the sons of Jerusalem,' themselves. Nevertheless, the foreign executant of God's anger had outgone his commission : he too is punished ; he is slain in Egypt, and his body exposed to dishonour.