Solomon and Solomonic Literature

by Moncure Daniel Conway

But one day a scholarly gentleman, a man of genius, was moved with compassion for these poor lost and priest-harried sheep: he turned aside from his college and his rank, and became their shepherd; he declared they owed no duties to any deity, and that the heavenly despot they so dreaded had no existence.

A modern gentleman in a fine mansion and estate may be amused at Bunyan’s quaint pilgrim, reading in a book and discovering that he was in a City of Destruction, fleeing with a burden on his back, and rejoicing when it rolls off at the cross. But if this gentleman should suddenly receive from some distant personage papers showing that his estate had been entirely mortgaged by his father, that it would soon be claimed and his family reduced to beggary, he might understand the City of Destruction. And if, soon after, some visitor arrived to state that the holder of the mortgages was dead; that those claims had all legally fallen into his own hands, and that he had burnt them, the rolling off of Christian’s burden might be appreciated,—also the enthusiasm of the personal followers of Jesus.

But one might further imagine a host of hungry lawyers, living on large retainers, not being quite happy at such easy settlements, especially if the generous visitor were found wealthy enough to go about buying up and burning claims, and ending litigation. This, to us hardly imaginable, was, however, actually the condition of things reflected in parts of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Therein the bond under which man suffers is clearly to him who hath the Power of Death, the Devil: Jesus ransomed man from the Devil.

The anonymous tractate superscribed solely “To the Hebrews,” though the last admitted into the New Testament, is probably the earliest document it contains. It has no doubt been tampered with, but the evidences of the early date of its conception of Christ remain. Not only was it evidently written before the destruction of the temple (anno 70), but before there was any thought of a mission to the Gentiles, who, with Paul their apostle, are ignored. Some of its phrases and illustrations are found in epistles of Paul, but, as Dr. Davidson pointed out in his Introduction to the New Testament, the general doctrine of this treatise is far from Pauline, and it is difficult to find any reason for supposing that the few borrowings were not by Paul, other than a preference for Paul, and disinclination to admit that there is any anonymous work in the New Testament. The treatise is without Paul’s egotism, or his fatalism, and its conception of the new movement seems decidedly more primitive than that in the recognised Pauline epistles. The sagacious Eusebius, “father of church history,” connects the Epistle “To the Hebrews” with the “Wisdom of Solomon,” and it seems clear that we have here the bridge between the last abutment of philosophic or “broad” Jahvism, and its “new departure” as Christism.

It is not of especial importance to the present inquiry to determine that Paul might not at some youthful period have written this work, though I cannot see how any critical reader can so imagine; but it will bear indirectly on that point if we read successively the following corresponding passages:

Wisdom of Solomon.—“For Wisdom, which is the worker of all things, taught me ... she is the breath of the power of God, and a pure influence flowing from the glory of the Almighty; therefore can no unclean thing fall into her. For she is the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God, and the image of his goodness. And alone she can do all things; herself unchanged, she maketh all things new: and in all ages entering into holy souls, she maketh them friends of God and prophets.”—(vii. 25–27.) “And Wisdom was with thee: which knoweth thy works, and was present when thou madest the world.” (ix. 9.)

Epistle to the Hebrews.—“God, having in time past spoken to the fathers by many fragments and divers ways in the prophets, at the end of these days spake unto us in Son whom he constituted heir of all things, by whom also he fashioned the ages; who, being the brightness of his light and the image of his substance, and guiding all things by the word of his authority, having made purification of sins, sat on the right of majesty in high places.” (i. 1–3.)

Epistle to the Colossians.—“Who (the Father) delivered us out of the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of his son of love, in whom we have our redemption, the forgiveness of our sins: who is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for in him were all things created, in the heavens and above the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through him and unto him; and he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” (i. 13–17.)

Fourth Gospel.—“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made. That which hath been made was life in him, and the life was the light of men. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory—glory as of an only begotten of a Father full of grace and truth.” (i. 1–15.)

It appears to me that the evolution is represented in the order given. Paul’s phrase, “first-born of all creation,” is an amplification of the word “first-born” used in the Epistle to the Hebrews, but there used in another connection,—and not solely, as we shall see, relating to Christ. Paul’s phrase corresponds with “the only-begotten,” etc., of John, and with the “son constituted heir” of the Epistle to the Hebrews, though the latter is a different Christological conception. When this writer’s doctrinal statement is finished, and after his argument is begun, he says (i. 6), “But when of old bringing the first-born into the inhabited earth, he saith, And pay homage to him all angels of God.” The word “first-born” here is probably the seed from which Paul develops his full flower of doctrine, given above. Paul’s conception of a creative Christ seems later than the “guiding” Christ (Heb. i. 3), which recalls the function of Wisdom as “director” at the creation (Prov. viii. 30); and the idea in this epistle to the Hebrews of a previous and historical Christophany, while harmonious with that of the “Wisdom of Solomon” (vii. 27),—that she (Wisdom) “in all ages enters into holy souls,”—is so primitive, unique, and so foreign to Paul, that the writer may have been one of those accused by him of preaching “another Jesus” (2 Cor. ii. 4).[1]