Solomon and Solomonic Literature

by Moncure Daniel Conway

But a woman among all these I have not found.

Look you, only this have I found—

That God made man upright,

But they have sought out many devices.

In the first seven lines of this passage we may recognize the personification in Proverbs ix. 13–18. The Woman of the fifth line is “Dame Folly”; but the last eight lines relate to womankind. The assurance in the eighth line that it is Koheleth who speaks raises a suspicion that the last eight lines are commentary,—a suspicion further confirmed by the awkwardness of the writing. Strictly read, it is left uncertain whether no woman is ever captured by Dame Folly, or not one escapes. However, as commentators are generally men, the interpretation has been adverse to woman.

But Jesus, perhaps remembering that Wisdom is as much a woman as Folly, is reported (Matthew xi. 19) to have said: “Wisdom is justified by her works.” In Luke vii. 35 it is, “Wisdom is justified of all her children.” Both of these readings appeal to the Solomonic portrait of the virtuous woman, in Proverbs xxxi. the last line of which says, “Let her works praise her,” and verse 28, “her children rise up and call her blessed.”

In Luke the sentence is a verse by itself, and the word “all” renders it probable that the sentiment has a bearing on the story that follows of the anointing of Jesus by a sinful woman.[3] Some such incident may have occurred, but the address to Simon the Pharisee making him to be the offender, and the woman one delivered from Dame Folly by her faith (“pleasing God”) looks like a criticism on the “fling” at woman in Ecclesiastes, with a proverb taken for text. This rebuke of the Pharisee, who thought “the prophet” ought to abhor the “sinner,” immediately precedes an account of the eminent women who supported Jesus by their means,—Mary, called Magdalene; Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward; Susanna, “and many others.” They “ministered to him of their substance,” and possibly the Pharisee and others might naturally suspect him of being among “the ensnared.” The fact is strange enough to be genuine, and Luke thinks it important to say that Jesus had healed these ladies of bad spirits and infirmities. Of course it is necessary to divest Gospel anecdotes of much post-resurrectional vesture, and in this case it cannot be credited that Jesus said that the woman’s sins were “many,” which he could not have known, or that he gave her formal absolution.

The indications of the study of Ecclesiasticus by Jesus are very remarkable. This book appears to have been a sort of nursery in which proverbs were trained for their fruitage in the last Solomon’s religious testimonies. What those testimonies were we cannot easily gather, but it is useful for comparative study to remark the sentences in Ecclesiastictus which correspond, either in thought or phraseology, with those ascribed to Jesus. The broad and the narrow ways barely suggested in “Proverbs” are here developed (Ecclesiasticus iv. 17, 18). “Hide not thy wisdom” (iv. 23, xx. 30). “Say not, ‘I have enough (goods) for my life’” (v. 1, xi. 24). “Extol not thyself” (vi. 2). We find the exhortation to judge not (vii. 6); rebuke of much speaking in prayer (14); warning against the lustful gaze (ix. 5, 8); the night cometh when no man can work (xiv. 16–19; cf. Eccles. ix. 10); the proud cast down, the humble exalted (x. 14, xi. 5); one only is good (xviii. 2); swear not (xxiii. 9); forgiven as we forgive (xxviii. 2); treasure rusting and treasure laid up according to the commandments of the Most High (xxix. 10, 11); “Judge of thy neighbor by thyself” (xxxi. 15); the altar-gift and the wronged brother (xxxiv. 18–20); he that seeks the law shall be filled (xxxii. 15); charity and not sacrifice (xxxv. 2).

These resemblances, of which more might be quoted, between teachings ascribed to Jesus and passages in the Wisdom Books, are so important that by the aid of these books some of the confused utterances attributed to him may be made clear.[4] Apart from the importations of Paul, and one or two from the epistle to the Hebrews, no reference by the Jesus of the Gospels to Jahvist books can be shown of similar significance. Combined as his Solomonic ideas are with his homage to Solomon and the Gentile Queen, and followed, as we shall see, by a resuscitation of Solomonic legends in connection with him, it appears clear that Jesus was of the Solomonic and anti-Jahvist school.

It would, however, be a great mistake to suppose that Jesus was simply a philosophical and ethical teacher. He cannot be so explained. The fragmentary sayings, so far as discoverable amid their post-resurrectional perversions, have the air of obiter dicta from a man engaged in a local propaganda of subversive principles. What the propaganda really was is but dimly discernible under its own subsequent subversion by his ghost, but there are a few sayings not traceable to his predecessors, and beyond the capacity of his contemporaries or his successors, which bring us near to an individual mind, and suggest the general nature of the agitation he caused.