Solomon and Solomonic Literature

by Moncure Daniel Conway

In the Avesta the good and wise Mother Earth (Armaîti) is opposed by a malign female “Drug” (demoness), whose paramours are described in Fargard xviii. (Vendîdâd). These two are fairly represented by Wisdom and Folly as personified in Proverbs viii. and ix.

The Jahvist who in Proverbs i. 1–7 (excepting the first six verses) undertakes to edit the original and ancient editor as well as Solomon, presents the curious case of one of Dame Folly’s phantoms interpreting the words of Wisdom’s guests. Unable to comprehend their portraiture of Dame Folly, he imagines that the allusion must be to harlotry, admonishes his “son” that “Jahveh giveth wisdom,” which among other things will “deliver thee from the strange woman,” whose “house sinketh down to the underworld and her paths unto phantoms.” Which recalls the pious lady who on hearing her ritualistic pastor accused by a dissenter of leanings toward the Scarlet Woman, anxiously inquired of a friend whether she had ever heard any scandal connected with their vicar’s name!

Our Jahvist editor seems to be one who would often say of laughter “it is mad”; and naturally could not imagine how Wisdom could “sport” before the Lord (viii. 30) unless she were in some sense mad. The sport before Jahveh could only be in mockery of some sinner’s torment, like the derision ascribed to Jahveh (Psalm ii. 4); consequently our editor represents Wisdom crying abroad in the streets:

“Because I have called and ye refused....

I also will laugh in the day of your calamity,

I will mock when your fear cometh.”

But Pliny mentions the Mazdean belief, confirmed by Parsi tradition, that Zoroaster was born laughing. To him Ahura Mazda says: “Do thou proclaim, O pure Zoroaster, the vigor, the glory, the help and the joy that are in the Fravashis (souls) of the faithful.”

However, we may see in these first seven chapters of Proverbs that Wisdom had become detached from the sons of men, in whom she had once found delight, was no longer in the human heart, but had finally ascended to wield the heavenly thunderbolts. And yet it is probable that we owe to this vindictive and menacing attitude of deified Wisdom the preservation of so many witty and sceptical things in books traditionally ascribed to Solomon. The orthodox legend being that the Lord had put supernatural wisdom into Solomon’s heart, and never revoked it despite his “idolatry” and secularism, it followed that the naughty man could not help continuing to be a medium of this divine person, Wisdom, and that it might be a dangerous thing to suppress any utterance of hers through Solomon,—unwitting blasphemy. However profane or worldly the writings might appear to the Jahvist mind, there was no knowing what occult inspiration there might be in them, and the only thing editors could venture was to sprinkle through them plenteous disinfectants in the way of “Fear-of-the-Lord” wisdom.

The proverbs in which the name Jahveh appears are not, of course, to be indiscriminately rejected as entirely Jahvist interpolations. It seems probable that little more than the word Jahveh has been supplied in some of these,—e. g., xix. 3, xx. 27, xxi. 1, 3, xxviii. 5, xxix. 26. But in a majority of cases the proverbs containing the name Jahveh are ethically and radically inharmonious with the substance and spirit of the book as a whole, which is founded on the supremacy of human “merits” as fully as Zoroastrianism, in which salvation depends absolutely on Good Thought, Good Word, Good Deed. In dynamic monotheism (as distinguished from ethical) of which Jahvism is the ancient and Islam the modern type, the doctrine of human “merits” is inadmissible: a man’s virtues are not his own, and in Jahveh’s sight they are but “filthy rags,” except so far as they are given by Jahveh. But in the Solomonic proverbs the highest virtues, and the supreme blessings of the universe, are obtained by a man’s own wisdom, character, and deeds. And in some cases the claims for Jahveh appear to have been inserted as if in answer or retort to proverbs ignoring the participation of any deity in such high matters. I quote a few instances, in which the antithesis turns to antagonism:

Solomon—By kindness and truth iniquity is atoned for.