It is not impossible, by the way, that it was from chaste Shulamith of the Song ascribed to Solomon that a bad reputation was fixed on Mary Magdalene, against whose virginal purity no word is said in the Bible, the chapter heading to Luke vii. alone identifying her, in contradiction to John xi. 2, as the woman who anointed Jesus. This libel seems to come from a far antiquity,--as far probably as the Talmudic "Miriam Magdala" (i. e., Braided-hair Mary); and this epithet might have been derived from Shulamith's "ringlets" which were "tied up in folds," and whose spikenard sent forth its odours while Solomon was at the table. The later Jahvism must have considered such attention by ladies to their hair as an evidence of wickedness. Paul, while recognizing that long hair is a woman's "glory" (1 Cor. xi.) dangerously fascinating even to the angels, testifies against "braided hair" (1 Tim. ii.), an instruction repeated in 1 Peter iii. Whether this lady of means who helped to support Jesus was from Magdala or not, it is nearly certain that her legend was derived from another sense of "Magdalene," and it is not improbable that the friendship of Jesus for her was in keeping with his Solomonic defiance of the Pharisaic. The Eastern tales of monarchs in disguise, derived from a legend of Solomon, may have prepared the popular mind for the double rôle performed by Jesus in the Gospels, for the earlier writers do not suggest any lowliness in his position beyond the humiliation of taking on human flesh and dying. In the Gospels we find him now an hungered, now dining with the Pharisee and anointed with precious ointment, again multiplying food; an humble-son of man who has not where to lay his head, a son of God with legions of angels at his command; purifying the temple with violence, and predicting its destruction; a peacemaker bringing a sword; telling his disciples to resist not evil, and arming them; enjoining secrecy about his miracles, presently parading them; prostrate with anguish in a garden, presently shining with unmasked splendour. Solomon never arrayed himself in any such brilliant raiment as that of the transfiguration, nor was his environment finer than the scenes imaged in some of these parables,--the prodigal's ring and robe, the king going to war and sending his ambassadors, the masters of fields and vineyards, the momentous wedding dress, the importance of rank and precedence at a feast. In miracles, too, we have the grand wedding at Cana, and the homage of the centurion deferentially rewarded. [47]