There is a vast Solomon mythology: in Palestine, Abyssinia, Arabia, Persia, India, and Europe, the myths and legends concerning the traditional Wisest Man are various, and merit a comparative study they have not received. As the name Solomon seems to be allegorical, it is not possible to discover whether he is mentioned in any contemporary inscription by a real name, and the external and historical data are insufficient to prove certainly that an individual Solomon ever existed.1 But that a great personality now known under that name did exist, about three thousand years ago, will, I believe, be recognised by those who study the ancient literature relating to him. The earliest and most useful documents for such an investigation are: the first collection of Proverbs, x–xxii. 16; the second collection, xxv–xxix. 27; Psalms ii., xlv., lxxii., evidently Solomonic; 2 Samuel xii. 24, 25; and 1 Kings iv. 29–34.

As, however, the object of this essay is not to prove the existence of Solomon, but to study the evolution of the human heart and mind under influences of which a peculiar series is historically associated with his name, he will be spoken of as a genuine figure, the reader being left to form his own conclusion as to whether he was such, if that incidental point interests him.

The indirect intimations concerning Solomon in the Proverbs and Psalms may be better understood if we first consider the historical books which profess to give an account of his career. And the search naturally begins with the passage in the Book of Kings just referred to:

This passage is Elohist: it is the Elohim—perhaps here the gods—who gave Solomon wisdom. The introduction of Jahveh as the giver, in the dramatic dream of Chapter iii., alters the nature of the gift, which from the Elohim is scientific and literary wisdom, but from Jahveh is political, related to government and judgment.

As for Mahol and his four sons, the despair of Biblical historians, they are now witnesses that this passage was written when those men,—or perhaps masculine Muses,—were famous, though they are unknown within any period that can be called historical. As intimated, they may be figures from some vanished mythology Hebraised into Mahol (dance), Ethan (the imperishable), Heman (faithful), Calcol (sustenance), Darda (pearl of knowledge).

In speaking of 1 Kings iv. 29–34 as substantially historical it is not meant, of course, that it is free from the extravagance characteristic of ancient annals, but that it is the nearest approach to Solomon’s era in the so-called historical books, and, although the stage of idealisation has been reached, is free from the mythology which grew around the name of Solomon.

But while we have thus only one small scrap of even quasi-historical writing that can be regarded as approaching Solomon’s era, the traditions concerning him preserved in the Book of Kings yield much that is of value when comparatively studied with annals of the chroniclers, who modify, and in some cases omit, not to say suppress, the earlier record. Such modifications and omissions, while interesting indications of Jahvist influences, are also testimonies to the strength of the traditions they overlay. The pure and simple literary touchstone can alone be trusted amid such traditions; it alone can distinguish the narratives that have basis, that could not have been entirely invented.

In the Book of Chronicles,—for the division into two books was by Christians, as also was the division of the Book of Kings,—we find an ecclesiastical work written after the captivity, but at different periods and by different hands; it is in the historic form, but really does not aim at history. The main purpose of the first chronicler is to establish certain genealogies and conquests related to the consecration of the house and lineage of David. Solomon’s greatness and his building of the temple are here transferred as far as possible to David.2 David captures from various countries the gold, silver, and brass, and dedicates them for use in the temple, which he plans in detail, but which Jahveh forbade him to build himself. The reason of this prohibition is far from clear to the first writer on the compilation, but apparently it was because David was not sufficiently highborn and renowned. “I took thee from the sheepcote,” says Jahveh, but adds, “I will make thee a name like unto the name of the great ones that are in the earth;” also, says Jahveh, “I will subdue all thine enemies.” So it is written in 1 Chronicles xvii., and it could hardly have been by the same hand that in xxii. wrote David’s words to Solomon:

In Chapter xvii. Jahveh claims that it is he who has subdued and cut off David’s enemies; his long speech is that of a war-god; but in the xxii. it is the God of Peace who speaks; and in harmony with this character all the bloodshed by which Solomon’s succession was accompanied, as recorded in the Book of Kings, is suppressed, and he stands to the day of his death the Prince of Peace. To him (1 Chron. xxviii., xxix.) from the first all the other sons of David bow submissively, and the people by a solemn election confirm David’s appointment and make Solomon their king.

Thus, 1 Chron. xvii., which is identical with 2 Sam. vii., clearly represents a second Chronicler. The hand of the same writer is found in 1 Chron. xviii., xix., xx., and the chapters partly identical in 2 Samuel, namely viii., x., xi.; the offence of David then being narrated in 2 Samuel xii. as the wrong done Uriah, whereas in 1 Chron. xxi. the sin is numbering Israel. The Chroniclers know nothing of the Uriah and Bathsheba story, but the onomatopœists may take note of the fact that David’s order was to number Israel “from Beer-sheba unto Dan.”

The first ten chapters of 2 Chronicles seem to represent a third chronicler. Here we find David in the background, and Solomon completely conventionalised, as the Peaceful Prince of the Golden Age. All is prosperity and happiness. Solomon even anticipates the silver millennium: “The king made silver to be in Jerusalem as stones.” It is only when the fourth chronicler begins (2 Chron. x.), with the succession of Solomon’s son Rehoboam, that we are told anything against Solomon. Then all Israel come to the new king, saying, “Thy father made our yoke grievous,” and he answers, “My father chastised you with whips, but I with scorpions.”

All this is so inconsistent with the accounts in the earlier books of both David and Solomon, that it is charitable to believe that the third chronicler had never heard the ugly stories about these two canonised kings.

In the First Book of Kings, Solomon is made king against the rightful heir, by an ingenious conspiracy between a wily prophet, Nathan, and a wily beauty, Bathsheba,—Solomon’s mother, whom David had obtained by murdering her husband.

It may be remembered here that David had by Bathsheba a son named Nathan (2 Sam. v. 14; 1 Chron. iii. 5), elder brother of Solomon, from whom Luke traces the genealogy of Joseph, father of Jesus, while Matthew traces it from Solomon. It appears curious that the prophet Nathan should have intrigued for the accession of the younger brother rather than the one bearing his own name. It will be seen, however, by reference to 2 Samuel xii. 24, that Solomon was the first legitimate child of David and Bathsheba, the son of their adultery having died. John Calvin having laid it down very positively that “if Jesus was not descended from Solomon, he was not the Christ,” some theologians have resorted to the hypothesis that Nathan married an ancestress of the Virgin Mary, and that Luke gives her descent, not that of Joseph; but apart from the fact that Luke (iii. 23) begins with Joseph, it is difficult to see how the requirement of Calvin, that Solomon should be the ancestor of Jesus, is met by his mother’s descent from Solomon’s brother. It is clear, however, from 2 Sam. xii. 24, 25, that this elder brother of Solomon, Nathan, is a myth. Otherwise he, and not Solomon, was the lawful heir to the throne (legitimacy being confined to the sons of David born in Jerusalem), and Jesus would not have been “born King of the Jews” (Matt, i. 2), nor fulfilled the Messianic conditions. It is even possible that Luke wished to escape the implication of illegitimacy by tracing the descent of Jesus from Solomon’s elder brother. But the writer of 1 Kings i. had no knowledge of the Christian discovery that, in the order of legal succession to the throne, the sons of David born before he reigned in Jerusalem were excluded. Adonijah’s legal right of succession was not questioned by David (1 Kings i. 6).

When David was in his dotage and near his end this eldest son (by Haggith), Adonijah, began to consult leading men about his accession, but unfortunately for himself, did not summon Nathan. This slighted “prophet” proposed to Bathsheba that she should go to David and tell him the falsehood that he (David) had once sworn before Jahveh that her son Solomon should reign; “and while you are talking,” says Nathan, “I will enter and fulfil” (that was his significant word) “your declaration.” The royal dotard could not gainsay two seemingly independent witnesses, and helplessly kept the alleged oath. David announced this oath as his reason,—apparently the only one,—for appointing Solomon. The prince may be credited with being too young to participate in this scheme.

Irregularity of succession and of birth in princes appeals to popular superstition. The legal heir, regularly born, seems to come by mere human arrangement, but the God-appointed chieftain is expected in unexpected ways and in defiance of human laws and even moralities. David, or some one speaking for him, said, “In sin did my mother conceive me,” and the contempt in which he was held by his father’s other children, and his father’s keeping him out of sight till the prophet demanded him (1 Sam. xvi. 11), look as if he, also, may have been illegitimate. Solomon may have been technically legitimate, but in any case he was the son of an immoral marriage, sealed by a husband’s blood. The populace would easily see the divine hand in the elevation of this youth, who seems to have been himself impressed with the like superstition.

Unfortunately, Solomon received his father’s last injunctions as divine commands. At the very time when David is pictured by the Chronicler in such a saintly death-bed scene, parting so pathetically with his people, and giving such unctuous and virtuous last counsels to Solomon, he is shown by the historian of Kings pouring into his successor’s ear the most treacherous and atrocious directions for the murder of certain persons; among others, of Shimei, whose life he had sworn should not be taken. Shimei had once called David what Jahveh also called him, a man of blood, but afterwards asked his forgiveness. Under a pretence of forgiveness, David nursed his vengeance through many years, and Shimei was now a white-haired man. David’s last words addressed to Solomon were these:

Such, according to an admiring annalist, were the last words uttered by David on earth. He died with a lie in his mouth (for he had sworn to Shimei, plainly, “Thy life shall not be taken”), and with murder (personal and vindictive) in his heart. The book opens with a record that they had tried to revive the aged king by bringing to him a beautiful damsel; but lust was gone; the only passion that survived even his lust, and could give one more glow to this “man of blood,” was vengeance. Two aged men were named by him for death at the hands of Solomon, who could not disobey, this being the last act of the forty years of reign of King David. His dying word was “blood.” One would be glad to believe these things mythical, but they are contained in a record which says:

This traditional incident of getting Uriah slain in order to appropriate his wife, made a deep impression on the historian of Samuel, and suspicious pains are taken (2 Sam. xii.) to prove that the illegitimate son of David and Bathsheba was “struck by Jahveh” for his parents’ sin, and that Solomon was born only after the marriage. Even if the youth was legitimate, the adherents of the king’s eldest son, Adonijah, would not fail to recall the lust and murder from which Solomon sprang, though the populace might regard these as signs of Jahveh’s favor. In the coronation ode (Psalm ii.) the young king is represented as if answering the Legitimists who spoke of his birth not only from an adulteress, but one with a foreign name:

(It is probable that the name Jahveh was inserted in this song in place of Elohim, and in several other phrases there are indications that the original has been tampered with.) The lines—

and others, may have originated the legendary particulars of plots caused by Solomon’s accession, recorded in the Book of Kings, but at any rate the emphatic claim to his adoption by God as His son, by the anointing received at coronation, suggests some trouble arising out of his birth. There is also a confidence and enthusiasm in the language of the court laureate, as the writer of Psalm ii. appears to have been, which conveys an impression of popular sympathy.

It is not improbable that the superstition about illegitimacy, as under some conditions a sign of a hero’s heavenly origin, may have had some foundation in the facts of heredity. In times when love or even passion had little connexion with any marriage, and none with royal marriages, the offspring of an amour might naturally manifest more force of character than the legitimate, and the inherited sensual impulses, often displayed in noble energies, might prove of enormous importance in breaking down an old oppression continued by an automatic legitimacy of succession.

In Talmudic books (Moed Katon, Vol. 9, col. 2, and Midrash Rabbah, ch. 15) it is related that when Solomon was conveying the ark into the temple, the doors shut themselves against him of their own accord. He recited twenty-four psalms, but they opened not. In vain he cried, “Lift up your heads, O ye gates!” But when he prayed, “O Lord God, turn not Thy face from Thine anointed; remember the mercies of David thy servant” (2 Chron. vi. 42), the gates flew open. “Then the enemies of David turned black in the face, for all knew that God had pardoned David’s transgression with Bathsheba.” This legend curiously ignores 1 Chron. xxii., which shows that Jahveh had prearranged Solomon’s birth and name, and had adopted him before birth. It is one of many rabbinical intimations that David, Bathsheba, Uriah, and Solomon, had become popular divinities,—much like Vulcan, Venus, Mars,—and as such relieved from moral obligations. Jewish theology had to accommodate itself ethically to this popular mythology, and did so by a theory of divine forgiveness; but really the position of Hebrew, as well as Christian, orthodoxy was that lustful David and Bathsheba were mere puppets in the divine plan, and their actions quite consistent with their being souls after Jahveh’s own heart.

It may occur to mythographers that I treat as historical narratives and names that cannot be taken so seriously; but in a study of primitive culture, fables become facts and evidences. A grand harvest awaits that master of mythology and folklore who shall bravely explore the legends of David and Solomon, but in the present essay mythical details can only be dealt with incidentally. Some of these may be considered at the outset.

It is said in 1 Kings i.:

That this story is characteristic of lustful David cannot blind us to the fact of its improbability. Whatever may be meant by “the coasts of Israel,” the impression is conveyed of a long journey, and it is hardly credible that so much time should be taken for a moribund monarch. Many interpretations are possible of the name Abishag, but it is usually translated “Father (or source) of error.” However this may be, the story bears a close resemblance to the search for a wife for Isaac. When Abraham sent out this commission he also “was old and well stricken in age,” and of Rebekah it is said, “The damsel was very fair to look upon, a virgin, neither had any man known her.” (Gen. xxiv.) Rebekah means “ensnarer,” and Abishag “father (source) of error”; and both women cause trouble between two brothers.

There is an Oriental accent about both of these stories. In ancient Indian literature there are several instances of servants sent out to search the world for a damsel fair and wise enough to wed the son and heir of some grand personage. Maya, the mother of Buddha, was sought for in the same way. This of itself is not enough to prove that the Biblical narratives in question are of Oriental origin, but there is a Tibetan tale which contains several details which seem to bear on this point. The tale is that of Viśākhā, and it is accessible to English readers in a translation by Schiefner and Ralston of the “Kah-Gyur.” (Trübner’s Oriental Series.)

Viśākhā was the seventh son of Mrgadhara, prime minister of the king of Kośala. For this youth a bride was sought by a Brahman, who in the land of Champa found a beautiful maiden whose name was also Viśākhā. She was, with other girls, entering a park, where they all bathed in a tank,—her companions taking off their clothes, but Viśākhā lifting her dress by degrees as she entered the water. Besides showing decorum, this maiden conducted herself differently from the others in everything, some of her actions being mysterious. The Brahman, having contrived to meet her alone, questioned her concerning these peculiarities, for all of which she gave reasons implying exceptional wisdom and virtue. On his return the Brahman described this maiden to the prime minister, who set forth and asked her hand for his son, and she was brought to Kośala on a ship with great pomp. The maiden then for a long time gives evidence of extraordinary wisdom, one example being of special importance to our inquiry. She determines which of two women claiming a child is the real mother. The king and his ministers being unable to settle the dispute, Viśākhā said:

In comparing this with the famous judgment of Solomon there appear some reasons for believing the Oriental tale to be the earlier. In the Biblical tale there is evidently a missing link. Why should the false mother, who had so desired the child, consent to have it cut in two? What motive could she have? But in the Tibetan tale one of the women is the wife, the other the concubine, of a householder. The wife bore him no child, and was jealous of the concubine on account of her babe. The concubine, feeling certain that the wife would kill the child, gave it to her, with her lord’s approval; but after his death possession of the house had to follow motherhood of the child. If, however, the child were dead, the false claimant would be mistress of the house. Here, then, is a motive wanting in the story of Solomon, and suggesting that the latter is not the original.

In the ancient “Mahosadha Jataka” the false claimant proves to be a Yakshini (a sort of siren and vampire) who wishes to eat the child. To Buddha himself is here ascribed the judgment, which is much the same as that of the “wise Champa maiden,” Viśākhā. Here, also, is a motive for assenting to the child’s death or injury which is lacking in the Biblical story.

Here, then, we find in ancient Indian literature a tale which may be fairly regarded as the origin of the “Judgment of Solomon.” And it belongs to a large number of Oriental tales in which the situations and accents of the Biblical narratives concerning David and Solomon often occur. There is a cave-born youth, Aśuga, son of a Brahman and a bird-fairy, with a magic lute which accompanies his verses, and who dallies with Brahmadetta’s wife. A king, enamored of a beautiful foreign woman beneath him in rank, obtains her by a promise that her son, if one is born, shall succeed him on the throne, to the exclusion of his existing heir by his wife of equal birth; but he permits arrangements for his elder son’s succession to go on until induced by a threat of war from the new wife’s father and country to fulfil his promise. A prime minister, Mahaushadha, travels, in disguise of a Brahman, in order to find a true wife; he meets with a witty maiden (Viśākhā), who directs him to her village by a road where he will see her naked at a bathing tank, though she had taken another road. This minister was, like David, lowly born; a “deity” revealed him to the king, as Jahveh revealed David to Samuel; he was a seventh minister, as David was a seventh son, and Solomon also.

Although the number seven was sacred among the ancient Hebrews, it does not appear to have been connected by them with exceptional wisdom or occult powers in man or woman. The ideas in which such legends as “The Seven Wise Masters,” “The Seven Sages,” and the superstition about a seventh son’s second-sight, originate, are traceable to ancient Indo-Iranian theosophy. It may be useful here to read the subjoined extract from Darmesteter’s introduction to the “Vendîdâd.” Having explained that the religion of the Persian Magi is derived from the same source as that of the Indian Rishis, that is, from the common forefathers of both Iranian and Indian, he says:

In Persian religion the Seven are always wise and beneficent. The vast folklore derived from this Parsî religion included the Babylonian belief in seven powerful spirits, associated with the Pleiades, beneficent at certain seasons, but normally malevolent: they all move together, taking possession of human beings, as in the case of the seven demons cast out of Mary Magdalene. In Egypt the seven are always evil. But neither of these sevens are especially clever. In Buddhist legends they are not so carefully classified, the seventh son or daughter manifesting exceptional powers, sometimes of good, sometimes of evil, but they are usually referred to for this wit or wisdom. In the Davidian and Solomonic legends these notions are found as if merely adhering to some importation, and without any perception of the significance of the number seven. David is an eighth son in 1 Sam. xvi. 10–13, but a seventh son in 1 Chron. ii. 16. Solomon is a tenth son in 1 Chron. iii. 1–6, but the seventh legitimate son in 2 Sam. xii. 24–25. The word Sheba means “the seven,” but the early scribes appear to have understood it as shaba, “he swears,” as in Gen. xxi. 30–31, where after the seven ewe lambs have given the well its name, Beersheba, it is ascribed the significance of an oath. Bathsheba is commonly translated “Daughter of the Oath,” but there can be little doubt that the name means “Daughter of the Seven,” and that it originated in the astute tricks by which that fair foreigner made herself queen-mother and her son king, above the lawful heir, whom she was instrumental (perhaps purposely) in getting out of the way by furthering his wishes.

Moral obliquities are little considered in these fair favorites of translunary powers. Viśākhā, in one Buddhist tale, gets herself chosen by the Brahman as bride of a great man by her care to veil her charms at the bath; in another tale she attracts a prime minister in disguise, and becomes his wife, partly by laying aside all of her clothing at a bathing tank where she knows he will see her. Bathsheba’s fame is similarly various. Her nudity and ready adultery with the king did not prevent her from passing into Talmudic tradition as “blessed among women,” and to her was even ascribed the beautiful chapter of Proverbs (xxxi.) in praise of the virtuous wife! In the “Wisdom of Solomon” she is described as the “handmaiden” of the Lord in anticipation of the Christian ideal of immaculate womanhood.

A similar development might no doubt be traced in the beautiful story of Vi[’]s[=]akh[=]a of Shravasti, the most famous of the female lay-disciples of Buddha. The queries put to her by Buddha and her explanations of her petitions, which had appeared enigmatic, are related in Carus’s Gospel of Buddha, and in form correspond with the very different questions and solutions that passed between the Brahman and the Tibetan Viśākhā, already mentioned. The name Viśākhā, from a Sanskrit root, meaning to divide, came to mean selection and intelligence, of all kinds, but in the matron of Shravastî wit becomes the genius of charity, and cleverness expands to enlightenment.

The Queen of Sheba,—“Queen of the Seven,”—is a sister spirit of this lay-disciple. Whatever truth may underlie the legends of this lady, there is little doubt of her legendary relation to the Wise Women of Buddhist parables,—to Viśākhā of the sevenfold wisdom; and of her who decided between the rival claimants to the same child; to Ambapāli, the courtesan, who journeyed to hear Buddha’s wisdom and presented to him and his disciples her park and mansion; and to the Queen of Glory, whose story belongs “to a very early period in the history of Buddhism.” Such is the opinion of Mr. Rhys Davids, whose translation of the Mahásudassana-Sutta, containing an account of the queen’s visit to the King of Glory, in his Palace of Justice, attended by her fourfold army, may be read in Vol. XI., p. 276, of Sacred Books of the East.

This exaltation of human knowledge and wisdom, travelling to find it, testing it with riddles and questions, belongs to the cult of the Magus and the Pundit.

With reference to the seventh son Viśākhā (all-potential) and his all-wise bride Viśākhā, a notable parallelism is found in the substantial identity of “Solomon” and “the Shunnamite,” on account of whom he slew his brother Adonijah. Shunnamite is equivalent to Shulamite, substantially the same as Solomon (peaceful), but here probably meaning that she was a “Solomoness,” a very wise woman. That such was her reputation appears by the “Song of Songs.”

An equally striking comparison may be made between the naming of Solomon and the naming of Mahaushadha, the Tibetan “Solomon” already mentioned as having married a wise Viśākhā. Among the many proofs of wisdom given by this village-born youth was the discovery of the real husband of a woman claimed by two men. One of the men being much the weaker, there could be no such trial as that proposed in the child’s case by Viśākhā. Mahaushadha questioned the two men as to what they had last eaten, then made them vomit, and so found out which had told the truth. Let us compare this Tibetan minister’s birth with that of Solomon:

Buddhist Birth Stories

The question remaining to be determined—which region was the borrower—cannot be settled, in the present cases, by the relative antiquity of the books in which they are found; not only are the ages of all the books, Hebrew and Oriental, doubtful, but they are all largely made up of narratives long anterior to their compilation. The safest method, therefore, must be study of the intrinsic character of each narrative with a view to discovering the country to whose intellectual and social fauna and flora, so to say, it is most related, and which of the stories bears least of the faults incidental to translation. I have applied this touchstone to the above examples, and believe that the Oriental stories are the originals. The Judgment of Solomon appears to me to have lost an essential link, a motif, which it retains in Buddhist versions. And I do not believe that any Hebrew Bathsheba could have set aside a name given her child by a prophet, in the name of Jahveh, in order to celebrate by another name the “rest” she found from her sorrows.

On the other hand, the borrowings by other countries from the legend of Solomon appear much more numerous. In some cases, as the legend of Jemshîd, there appear to have been exchanges between the two great sages, but the Solomonic traditions seem preponderant in Vikramadatsya, the demon-commanding hero of India. Solomon became a proverb of wisdom and liberality in Abyssinia, Arabia, and Persia. Ideal Sulaimans and Solimas abound. Solomon has influenced the legends of many heroes, such as Haroun-Alraschid and Charlemagne, and I will even venture a suspicion that the fame, and perhaps the name, of Solon have been influenced by the legend of Solomon. Lexicographers give no account of Solon’s name; he is assigned to a conjectural period before written Greek existed; his interviews with Crœsus, given in Herodotus, are hopelessly unhistorical, and his moralisings to the rich man recall the book of Proverbs. The Solon of Plato’s Critias is already a mythological voyager, a Sindebad-Solomon, and his romance of the lost Atlantis is like an idealised rumour of the Wise Man’s Kingdom. Solon’s “history” was developed by Plutarch, seven centuries after the era assigned to the sage, out of poetical fragments ascribed to him, and he is represented as a great trader and traveller in the regions associated with Solomon. It is doubtful whether this chief of the Seven Sages, whose Solomonic motto was “Know Thyself” (cf. Prov. xiv. 8), could he reappear, would know himself as historically costumed by writers in our era, from Plutarch to Grote.

At any rate there is little doubt of a reference to the Seven Spentas or to the Seven Sages in Proverbs ix. 1: