SOLOMON, ODES OF, a collection of 42 hymns known to the early Christian Church. In the 6th century they appear in a list which includes most of the books in the Old Testament Apo crypha, and again in the 9th century they are placed in the Stichometry of Nicephorus between the books of Ecclesiasticus and of Esther, and bracketed with the collection of 18 so-called Psalms of Solomon, which was composed in the ist century B.C. Both the collections are, of course, pseudonymous.
A complete manuscript of the odes was recovered in 1908 by Dr. Rendel Harris from a 16th century Syriac manuscript iii his possession (which also contained the Psalms of Solomon). The version is written on paper possibly between three and four hundred years old, and came it is believed from the Valley of the Tigris, together with a miscellaneous collection of other Syriac leaves. Prior to this the only places where the text of any of these odes could be read was in the Pistis Sophia, though there is a short extract from one in the Institutes of Lactantius. In Dr. Harris's manuscript the first, second, and part of the third odes are missing, but the first has been restored from the Pistis Sophia.
This latter volume is a curious compilation purporting to record a series of conversations which took place on the Mount of Olives between the Risen Christ and his disciples in the 12th year after the Resurrection, and is interspersed with a series of hymns called Metanoiai or acts of penitence. It is believed to have been written in Egypt between A.D. 200 and 250, and to be the handbook of a Gnostic "mystery" or religious service. The occurrence in it of the five odes of Solomon is felt by some stu dents to throw a light upon the use and object of the entire col lection. They are in fact thought to be baptismal hymns, psalms of initiation into a Christian "mystery." 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 though some may be Jewish, and the writer of the Pistis Sophia seems to have re garded them as almost if not quite canonical. Dr. Harris would
date several of them between A.D. 75 and ioo.
They contain few traces of the New Testament, and the words "Gospel" and "Church" are not found. Here and there a Johan nine atmosphere is to be detected, but not sufficiently to justify the assumption that the author knew the Johannine literature, though the expression "the Word" occurs. References to the life and teaching of Christ are rare, though the Virgin birth is alluded to in ode 19 in a passage marked by legendary embellishment, and the descent into Hades is also mentioned several times. There are no clear allusions to baptism and none at all to the Eucharistic celebration. One passage speaks of ministers (perhaps deacons) who are entrusted with the Water of Life to hand to others. The word priest occurs once in the beginning of ode 20. "I am a priest of the Lord, and to Him I do priestly service, and to Him I offer the sacrifices of His thought." Mgr. Batiffol argues that Solomon stands spiritually for Our Lord, and that the general doctrine of the odes is Docetic. His argument is somewhat weakened by the fact that in many of the odes the speaker appears to be a redeemed human being and not the Messiah. The odes seem to have been originally written in Greek. They vary in execution and spiritual tone, though most of them represent a very high level of spiritual experience and an intense warmth of personal devotion and great buoyancy and joy. They abound in puzzles, and there is some exceptionally striking or eccentric feature about nearly half of them.
Harnack considers that they form a Jewish Grundschrift, with a number of Christian interpolations ; he finds in them a link be tween the piety and theology of the Testaments of the twelve Patriarchs and that of the Johannine Gospel and Epistles. The symbol of the wheel and also that of the letter in ode 23 resemble passages in Oriental literature, and indeed the Psalms show a strong resemblance to some of the lyric poems of Hinduism.