Solomon And Solomonic Literature Part 16

Paul appears to have considered it an important apostolic credential to have had to contend with a Satan (2 Cor. xii. 7-10), and Peter was honoured by a special request made by Satan, and conceded, that he should be for a time under his diabolical control. (Luke xxii. 31.)

As in the case of Solomon, the tests and trials of the superhuman wisdom and power of Jesus are found chiefly in tradition and folklore. The apocryphal gospels contain many, and some are preserved by Persian and Arabian poets. In the New Testament a few examples appear in which his utterances are given a quasi-judicial tone. There are several points of resemblance between the famous judgment of Solomon on the two harlots contending for the child, and the sentence of Jesus in favour of "sinful Mary," sister of Martha, accused by Simon the Pharisee. In both cases the decision was made at a feast, and in favour of the one who "loved much." It is not, however, the incident in itself that is now referred to, but only the formality ascribed to it in the narrative. And this adheres to the entire story. The anointing of Jesus may have occurred, but the scenic touches recall lines in the Solomonic "Song of Songs":

"While the King sat at his table, My spikenard sent forth its fragrance."

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 friends.h.i.+p 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 role 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 G.o.d 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 amba.s.sadors, 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]

In the Hebrew Gospel Jesus says, "I will that ye be twelve apostles for a testimony to Israel"; with which we may compare the "twelve officers over all Israel" appointed by Solomon (1 Kings iv. 7). In Mark the first bestowal on Jesus of his Solomonic t.i.tle "Son of David" (x.) is immediately followed by his Solomonic entry into Jerusalem. In Matthew the blind man's tribute is followed by the cry of mult.i.tudes, "Hosanna to the Son of David"; and the whole scene is obviously from the narrative in 1 Kings i. of the procession of Solomon, seated on David's mule, on the occasion of the anointing which made him the model Messiah, in virtue of which he was King and Priest in combination. Solomon dedicated the temple himself, as High Priest, and to him, as King-Priest, the privilege of sanctuary was subordinate. Wherefore he had an offender executed while holding the horns of the altar. The t.i.tular Son of David, on the morrow of his triumphal entry, a.s.sumes authority in the temple, and scourges out of it the sellers of things used in the sacrifices,--especially Doves. These his human mother had sacrificed after his birth for purification, but by this time they symbolized his divine mother, the Holy Spirit, and were not to be sold.

Who can suppose that this violence, which were as if one a.s.saulted those who sell holy candles and pictures in a church vestibule, really occurred? At Oberammergau the whole tragedy of the Pa.s.sion Play hinges on the resentment of these merchants, who appeal to the Sanhedrim for protection from the violence of one man armed with a whip! The story (John ii.) is an epitaph of the primitive Christ, the value of whose blood was its proof that his victory over the Adversary was that of a Man, unaided by a divine, unblemished by a carnal, weapon: triumph by either would have been defeat.

The bread and wine offered to Abraham by the mythical king-priest of Salem (Solomon disguised as Melchizedek) may have been suggested by the bread and wine offered by Wisdom to her guests, in Proverbs ix. However this may be, there is clearly discoverable at the Last Supper of Jesus the Satan that Jahveh raised up against Solomon in the presence of mythical Judas ("Satan entered into him," says John), and in the whole scene the table of Wisdom. "She hath mingled her wine, she hath furnished her table," and cries--

"Come, eat ye of my bread, And drink of the wine which I have mingled."

That Jesus supped with his disciples, at the Pa.s.sover time, is very probable, but that the bread and wine alone should have been selected for symbolical usage (a point unknown to the fourth gospel) conforms too closely with the Solomonic prologue to be a mere coincidence. The words "Take, eat," "Drink ye all of it," recall also the Song of Songs--

Eat, O friends!

Drink, yea abundantly, O beloved!

CHAPTER XVII.

THE HEIR OF SOLOMON'S G.o.dHEAD.

The anger of Jahveh against Solomon (1 Kings xi.) is, of course, the outcome of late theological explanations of how the ancient and much idealised kingdom could have been divided after divine promises of its protection. The interview with Solomon is a sort of dramatization, in which the anachronism of making Jahveh a historic contemporary of the Wise King represents the fact that when the tribal deity was evolved it was in antagonism to a Solomon who, though his body had long mouldered, was still "marching on." That Solomon had to contend with the hard and fanatical elements afterwards consolidated in Jahvism is pretty clear, and we may see in him a primitive Akbar. A century after Akbar's death the Rajah of Joudpoor said to the emperor Aurungzebe: "Your ancestor Akbar, whose throne is now in heaven, conducted the affairs of his empire in equity and security for the period of fifty years. He preserved every tribe of men in repose and happiness, whether they were followers of Jesus or of Moses, of Brahma or Mohammed. Of whatever sect or creed they might be, they all equally enjoyed his countenance and favour, insomuch that his people, in grat.i.tude for the indiscriminate protection which he afforded them, distinguished him by the appellation of The Guardian of Mankind." Moslem fanaticism could not tolerate such toleration, and Akbar's reign was followed by conflicts very similar to those which followed Solomon's reign, leading to the Mogul empire, but ultimately to the reign of an "Empress of India," under whom we now see the same toleration of all religions which prevailed in the fifty years of Akbar.

The Moslem saw in Akbar's liberality and toleration the supreme offence of putting other G.o.ds--Jesus, Brahma, Ahuramazda--beside Allah. The Jahvist saw retrospectively in Solomon's liberality the putting of Moloch, Ashera, and other G.o.ds beside Jahveh. It was therefore recorded that Jahveh determined to rend all the tribes save one from Solomon's son (a vaticinium ex evento). But that one was enough to preserve the Solomon cult.

Ananke oude Theoi machontai. This Necessity, which the Greeks saw working above all the G.o.ds, is man himself, and worked also above Jah and Jahvism, nay, by means of them. Gradually they seemed to prevail over Solomonism. The Proverbs and Solomonic Psalms were transfused with Jahvism, but by this process the heavenly and the terrestrial kings were confused, and the idea of a human heir to the throne of Jahveh was conceived. As when, in our own era, Islam swallowed Zoroaster, with the result of bringing forth the great literary age of Persia, with Parsaism rationalized under a transparent veil of Moslem phrase and fable, so anciently arose the Hebrew Faizis and Saadis and Omar Khayyams. Of these was the Isaiah who, with pigments of the Solomonic sunset, painted the sunrise of a new day, and a new earth-born G.o.d.

"Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall rest on his shoulder; and his name shall be called Counsellor of Wonders, G.o.d-hero, Father of Spoil, Prince of Peace. Enlarged shall be dominion, and without cessation of peace, on the throne of David, and throughout his kingdom, to establish it and uphold it by justice and righteousness from henceforth and forever."

Every t.i.tle, every tint, in this gorgeous vision is taken from the nuptial song for Solomon (Ps. xlv.) and Solomon's Psalm (lxxii.) The "delightsomeness poured over (Solomon's) lips" (Ps. xlv. 2) makes the Counsellor of Wonders; his deification (verses 6, 7) makes the G.o.d-hero; the tributes of Tars.h.i.+sh, and Sheba make him father of spoil (Ps. lxxii.); his "mildness" (Ps. xlv. 4) his abundant "peace"

(Ps. lxxii. 3, 7) make the Prince of Peace; and the rest is a general refrain for both of the Psalms.

Psalm xlv. opens with the words, "My verse concerns the King," and there is a fair consensus of the learned that the king is Solomon. It has been found impossible to fix upon any other monarch to whom the eulogia would be applicable, and the resemblance of the theme to the Song of Solomon proves that at an early period writers connected the Psalm with Solomon and one of his espousals.

In quoting Professor Newman's translation of this Psalm (ante II) I alluded to my slight alterations. These are few and verbal, but momentous, and were not made without consultation of many critical authorities and versions. Professor Newman was unable to believe that the poet really meant to address Solomon as G.o.d, and in verse 6 translates "Thy throne divine," in verse 7, "Therefore hath G.o.d, thy G.o.d, etc." Others, with similar theistic bias, have shrunk from what, according to the balance of critical interpretation, is the clear sense of the original:

"Thy throne, O G.o.d, ever and always stands; A righteous sceptre is thy royal sceptre: Thou lovest right and hatest evil; Therefore, O G.o.d, hath thy G.o.d anointed thee With oil of joy above thy fellow-kings."

When these verses were written--and verse 11, where after Adonai the Vulgate has Elohim, "He is thy Lord G.o.d, wors.h.i.+p thou him"--the rigid Jewish monotheism did not exist; and the apostrophe might have continued without special notice had not the psalm been included in the Jewish hymnology and thus given the solemnity and consecration ascribed by Jahvism to its canonical Book of Psalms. But ultimately it made a tremendous and even revolutionary impression; and that the verses were interpreted as bestowing the divine name on Solomon, by those most jealous of that name, is proved, I think, by the following considerations:

1. Isaiah, in his vision quoted above (Is. ix.) combines the phraseology of Ps. xlv. with that of Ps. lxxii. (which bears Solomon's name as its author), and ascribes to a new-born child the t.i.tle "G.o.d-hero."

2. The recently discovered original of a fragment of Ecclesiasticus includes the pa.s.sage about Solomon in xlvii., and it is said in verse 18: "Thou (Solomon) wast called by the glorious name which is called over Israel." This seems to be a plain reference to the ascriptions in Ps. xlv., where alone the divine name is applied to any individual mortal. Ecclesiasticus was compiled early in the second century before our era, and on the basis of much earlier compilations, as its prologue states.

3. In the "Wisdom of Solomon" the monarch is represented as a mortal who by the divine gift of supernatural Wisdom had gained immortality; he had become privy to the mysteries of G.o.d, was his Beloved, his Son. This was written about the first year of our era.

4. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews translates the Psalm xlv. as it is translated above, interpreting the words of deification as meant for the Firstborn of G.o.d at his ancient appearance on earth (i. 6), and applicable to his reappearance as Christ; arguing from such language of deification the superiority of the Son of G.o.d over the angels, who were never so addressed.

A court poet addresses a princely bridegroom as Elohim, as a G.o.d--as it were, an Apollo. Had more songs of like antiquity by poets of his race been preserved, no doubt other instances of such rhapsody might be found, but it happens that this is the only instance in Hebrew literature where an individual man is clearly addressed as G.o.d (for Exod. vii. 1 and 1 Sam. xxviii. 13 are not really exceptions). As in the Psalm that is the only instance in which an individual man is, in the Old Testament, addressed as G.o.d, so is its application in the Epistle to the Hebrews the only indisputable instance in which an individual is addressed as G.o.d in the New Testament.

"Thy throne, O G.o.d." Fateful words! The word of G.o.d, says this Epistle, is sharper than any two-edged sword, but its writer himself unwittingly unsheathed from a courtier's compliment just such a sword. One edge has slaughtered innumerable Jews, Moslems, Arians, Socinians, mingling their blood with that of the humane Jesus himself on the sacrificial altar he tried so hard to exchange for mercifulness. The other edge turned against the moral heart of Jesus himself, lowering the tone of all narratives and utterances ascribed to him after his connection with Jahveh, and consequently lowering all Christendom under its dishonourable burden of accommodating human veracity and kindness to the bad heavenly manners that were acquired by the deified Christ. For there was no other G.o.d to adopt him but a particularly rude one.

Theological scholars who have compared the Epistle to the Hebrews with the Epistles of Paul have dwelt on the theological differences, but the moral differences are greater. In the Epistle to the Hebrews the emphasis is laid on the service of Jesus to mankind: it is this that makes him, as it made Solomon, worthy of wors.h.i.+p as a G.o.d, and the ancient G.o.d with his sacrifices is virtually represented as transforming himself and his government to the measure of Jesus. Jesus is complete and perfect man, no part or power of his divine nature accompanying him on earth. But we see in Philippians ii. 7, and other pa.s.sages, the primitive idea fading away, and Jesus pictured as a divine being in the mere semblance and disguise of a man, no real man at all; a theory which prevails in the story of the transfiguration, where the disguise is for a moment thrown aside. The earlier idea of his genuine humanity was still strong enough to prevent any stories of miracles wrought by Jesus from arising, the resurrection being a miracle wrought by G.o.d after the work of Jesus was "finished," as he is said to have proclaimed from the stake. But legends of miracles became inevitable after the theory of his disguise was diffused, and also stories of the vituperation, anathemas, and att.i.tudinizings, which are so offensive in a man, but so characteristic of the whole history of Jahveh, with whom he was gradually identified. A gentleman does not call his opponents vipers and consign them to h.e.l.l, but Jahveh is not under any such obligations. And, alas, disregard of the humanities did not, as we have seen, stop there even in Paul's time. In the further development, that of Jesus the magician, the personal character of Jesus was sadly sacrificed, and it is only due to the superst.i.tion that prevents the New Testament narratives from being read in a common sense way that people generally are not shocked by some of the representations.

When the second Solomon was born in Bethlehem, as the Gospel carols tell, Wise Men came to wors.h.i.+p him, but Jahveh had already fixed his own star above the cradle, and his angels contended for the great man, as for centuries the wisdom of the first Solomon had been jahvized. It was, however, the opinion of some ancient commentators that the cry of the angels, "Glory to G.o.d in the highest" meant that the birth of Jesus was to operate in the heavenly heights, and work changes there also. One may indeed dream of a deity longing for a human love,--grieving at being through ages an object of fear, personified as Wrath,--rejoicing in the birth of any new interpreter who should free him from the despot glory, "I create evil," and reconcile the human heart to him as eternal love--love ever burdened with the griefs of humanity, ever seeking to be born of woman, and to struggle against the dark and evil forces of nature. So one may dream, and it is a pathetic fact that the contention between humanity and heaven for the new-born Saviour is traceable in varying versions of the Angels' song. While half of Christendom sing "On earth peace, good will toward men," the other half sing, "On earth peace to men of good will." Our Revisers find the balance of authorities on the side of authority, and translate

Glory to G.o.d in the highest, And on earth peace among men in whom he is well pleased.

Although the "higher criticism" appears to treat with a certain contempt the birth-legends and carols in Matthew and Luke, and the genealogies, beyond the letter of these is visible more of the vanis.h.i.+ng Jesus "after the flesh," the real and great man, than of the risen Christ in whom his humanity was lost. The "shepherd of my people," he who is to absolve them from their nightmare "sins," make crooked ways straight, rough places smooth, and free them from fear, is remembered in these rhapsodies of the Infancy, in the terrors of Herod, and gifts of the Wise. They have a certain evolution in the benevolent teachings and healing miracles of the Synoptics, easily discriminated from the competing Jahveh-Christ. (Think of a teacher urging his friends to forgive offenders seventy times seven and then promising them a "Comforter" who will never forgive the slightest offence, though merely verbal, either in this world or in the next!)

The extent to which the man was lowered and lost in the risen Lord is especially revealed in the fourth Gospel. Except for the story of the woman taken in adultery, admittedly interpolated from another Gospel, the fourth Gospel may be regarded as perhaps the only book in the Bible without recognition of humanity. "I pray not for the world, but for those whom thou hast given me," is the keynote. In this work there is no text for the reformer and the philanthropist, unless perhaps the retreat of Jesus from a prospect of being made king. What inferences of benevolence might be made even from the miracles related have to be strained through the arrogance, self-aggrandizement, att.i.tudinizing, as of a showman, with which they are wrought. [48] A rudeness to his mother precedes the turning of water to wine (ii. 4); the n.o.bleman's son is healed because the aristocrat will not believe without a miracle (iv. 48); the infirm man at Bethesda is healed only after a sham question, "Wouldest thou be made whole?" and threatened afterwards (v. 6, 14); feeding the mult.i.tude is attended with another sham question (vi. 5), and a parade of the fragments (13); the man born blind is declared to have been so born solely for the sign and wonder manifested in his cure (ix. 3).

But the supremacy of a new Jahveh over all moral obligations and all truthfulness is especially displayed in the resurrection of Lazarus (xi.). Here Jesus is represented as staying away from the sick man, in order that he may die; he affects to believe Lazarus is only asleep, but finding his disciples pleased with the prospect of recovery, in which case there would be no miracle, he becomes frank (parrhesia) and a.s.sures them Lazarus is dead; he tells his disciples privately he is glad Lazarus is dead; he tells Martha, when she comes out to him alone, that her brother shall rise; but when her sister Mary comes out, accompanied by her Jewish consolers, Jesus breaks out into vehement groans and lamentations, las.h.i.+ng himself (etaraxen eauton) into this sham grief over a man at whose death he has connived and who would presently be alive! Even in his prayer over Lazarus the pretence is kept up, and his Father is informed, in an aside, "I know that thou hearest me always, but because of the mult.i.tude around I said it, that they may believe that thou didst send me." Thus does the fourth Gospel sink Jesus morally into the grave of Lazarus, leaving in his place an embodiment of the Jahveh who had lying spirits to send out into his prophets on occasion.

The resurrection of Lazarus is a transparent fabrication out of the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Abraham's words to the rich man,--"neither will they be persuaded if one rose from the dead,"--were not adapted to a faith built on a resurrection, so that parable is suppressed in the fourth Gospel. The resurrection of a supernatural man is not quite sufficient for people not supernatural. Those who had been looking for a returning Christ had died, just like the unbelievers. There was a tremendous necessity for an example of the resurrection of an ordinary man. Shocking as are the immoral details of the story, there is audible in it the pathetic cry of the suffering human heart, and the demand that must be met by any Gospel claiming the faith of humanity. "Lord, if thou hadst been here my brother had not died!" Through what ages has that declaration, not to be denied, ascended to cold and cruel skies? It is found in the Vedas, in Job, in the Psalms. If there is a Heart up there why are we tortured? To the many apologies and explanations and pretences which imperilled systems had given, Christianity had to support itself by something more than Egyptian dreams and Platonic speculations. A dead man must arise; it must be done dramatically, amid domestic grief and neighbourly sympathy; it must be done doctrinally, with funeral sermon turned to rejoicings. And this was all done in the story of Lazarus in such a way that it might surround every grave with illusions for centuries. For who, while tears are falling, will pause to handle the wreaths, and find whether they are genuine? Who, while the service is proceeding, will a.n.a.lyze the details, and ask whether it is possible that the good Jesus could have practiced such deception and a.s.sumed such theatrical att.i.tudes? [49]

The indifference of the fourth Gospel to such moral considerations as those found in the Synoptics is so apostolic that I am inclined to place much of it nearer to the first century than I once supposed. Paul's rage against the "wisdom of this world," and his fulminations against the learned because they are not "called,"

are fully adopted by the Johannine Christ, who says to the blind man whose eyes he had opened, and who was wors.h.i.+pping him: "For judgment came I into this world, that they that see not may see, and they that see may become blind." And these ideas are represented in a legend related in the book of Acts which is really allegorical, though our translators have manipulated it into serious history.

A persecutor of Christians, on whom the spirit "came mightily," as on King Saul, so that he was a new "Saul among the prophets," sought to convert to his new faith a Roman Proconsul, Sergius Paul. But with this Consul was a learned man of the Jewish Wisdom School, Bar-Jesus Elymas,--i. e., Dr. Anti-Jesus Wise Man. Like Michael and Satan contending for the body of Moses, Prophet Saul and Anti-Jesus Wise Man contended for the Roman Paul's soul. Prophet Saul prevailed by calling Anti-Jesus Wise Man a child of the devil, and striking him blind. Thereupon Consul Paul believed, being "astonished at the teaching of the Lord." Whereupon Prophet Saul triumphantly carries off the Roman's name as a trophy. [50]

Beginning in this conclusive way, by striking human Wisdom sightless ("that they that see may become blind," John ix. 39), the Anti-Wisdom propaganda, which began with identifying Wisdom with the serpent in Eden, pa.s.sed on to inspire the Church Fathers who gloated over the eternal tortures of the poets and philosophers of Greece and Rome. Alas for the philosophers not in their graves, but in their cradles, or in the womb of the future! For torments are nearest "eternal" when they begin at once on earth.