Solomon and Solomonic LiteratureConway, Moncure Daniel
History
Solomon and Solomonic Literature
Conway, Moncure Daniel
Hebrew literature -- History and criticism; Solomon, King of Israel
In other verses these Fravashis (the word means "protectors") help
the children unborn, nourish health, develop the wise. The imagery
relating to them is largely related to the stars, of which many are
guardians. These are probably the origin of the Solomonic similitude
of reason, "The spirit (nishma) of man is the lamp of----?"
With all of these correspondences between the Solomonic proverbs,
nothing is more remarkable than their originality, so far as
any ancient scriptures are concerned. While they are totally
different from the Psalms, in showing man as a citizen of the world,
relying on himself and those around him for happiness, and exalting
nothing above human virtue and intelligence, without any religious
fervor or wrath, the proverbialist is equally far from the ethical
superstitions of Zoroastrian religion, which abounds in fictitious
"merits" and anathematises fictitious immoralities. It is as if
some sublime Eastern pedlar and banker of ethical and poetic gems,
who had come in contact with Oriental literatures, had separated
from their liturgies and prophecies the nuggets of gold and the
precious stones, polishing, resetting, and exciting others to do the
like. At the same time many of the sentences are the expressions of
an original mind, a man of letters, neither Eastern nor Oriental,
and these may be labelled with the line of the Persian poet Faizi:
"Take Faizi's Díwán to bear witness to the wonderful speeches of a
freethinker who belongs to a thousand sects."
CHAPTER IX.
THE SONG OF SONGS.
The praise of the virtuous woman, at the close of the Proverbs,
is given a Jahvist turn by verse 30: "Favour is deceitful and beauty
vain; but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised." But the
Solomonists also had their ideas of the virtuous woman, and of beauty,
these being beautifully expressed in a series of dramatic idylls
entitled The Song of Songs. To this latter, in the original title,
is added, "which is Solomon's"; and it confirms what has been said
concerning the superstitious awe of everything proceeding from Solomon,
and the dread of insulting the Holy Spirit of Wisdom supernaturally
lodged in him, that we find in the Bible these passionate love
songs. And indeed Solomon must have been superlatively wise to have
written poems in which his greatness is slightly ridiculed. That of
course would be by no means incredible in a man of genuine wisdom--on
the contrary would be characteristic--if other conditions were met
by the tradition of his authorship.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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