Solomon and Solomonic Literature

by Moncure Daniel Conway

In Ecclesiasticus it is written: “In the division of the nations of the whole earth he set a ruler over every people; but Israel is the Lord’s portion: whom, being his first-born, he nourisheth with discipline, and giving him the light of his love doth not forsake him.... For all things cannot be in men, because the son of man is not immortal. What is brighter than the sun? Yet the light thereof faileth; and flesh and blood will imagine evil” (xvii.). Now in the Zoroastrian theology there could be no direct contact of God with matter: the devil’s empire could be invaded and death conquered only by a perfectly “blameless” Man. (Cf. “Wisdom of Solomon,” xviii. 21, with the “sinless” of Heb. iv. 15, the “guileless” of vii. 26, and “without blemish,” ix. 14). The spotless one can use no carnal weapon. In the Zoroastrian theology the divine potency is that of the Word, and formulas exist to be wielded against every variety of demon. So in this Epistle the supremacy of the Son is by “the word of his power”, (i. 3), and “the Word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword” (iv. 12).

The enterprise of the Son of God was to fulfil these conditions. He must become a complete man, share all the infirmities of man, all his liabilities to temptation, receive no assistance from his Father, no angelic help,—placed lower than the angels,—and confront the powers of Death and Hell without any material weapon. If he succeeded in remaining sinless, faithful to the divine law, even unto death, even while in hell, unshaken by threats, sufferings, or seductions, it must be a purely human achievement. There was no miracle; even the suspicion of using supernatural power would have tainted the whole work of Jesus as conceived in this Epistle.

This undertaking was not simply for the sake of mankind. All things are not yet subjected to the divine sway (Heb. ii. 8). Heaven itself was shaken, when the old covenant failed, and trembled for the result of the tremendous conflict of the Son of Man on earth with its Prince and his hosts (Heb. xii. 25–29). This was “the joy in front of him” (xii. 2), as well as the rescue of men.

Thus was the man left entirely to the devil, not even his life being reserved, as in the case of Job. He loudly cries for help, even with tears, at the sight of Death; he is heard, pitied, but no help comes. He must trust to his human merits, and not miracles, for his Sonship is of no value in this conflict. By his obedience learned in his sufferings, by his sinlessness under all trials and temptations, he fulfilled the conditions of deathlessness. By his own heart’s blood, not by offerings of bloody sacrifices, not by supernatural power, he reached the place of holiness, “having obtained eternal redemption.” From first to last there was no divine aid. His unanswered loud cries (Heb. v. 7) may be connected with the legend of his expiring cry, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?”

Much of the thought here is similar to the “Wisdom of Solomon” (ii. 22–4, iii. 1–9), where however the ideas are conflicting. It is said, “God created man to be immortal, and made him to be an image of his own eternity: nevertheless, through the devil’s envy came death into the world, and they that hold of his side do find it.” But then Jahvism puts in with the declaration that the seeming destruction of the righteous is God’s chastisement and probation of them. The Epistle to the Hebrews does not regard the sufferings and death of Jesus as God’s work at all, but all from the devil. Though God spoke by him there is no suggestion that he sent Jesus, or that his coming was not voluntary.

With this reservation, and a large one it is, that Jesus was not delivered up to Satan by God, but left to confront his torments in an effort to subdue him, “bring him to nought,” the central idea of the Epistle is a doctrinal transfiguration of Job, who being delivered up to Satan, triumphs over the tempter and tormentor, and through all preserves his sinlessness and loyalty to God. The result being that those who had denied Job’s merits, his sinlessness, had to secure Job’s intercession in order to escape the penalty of having ascribed his sufferings to God (Job xlii. 8).[4] This relationship of ideas is all the more interesting because apparently unconscious in the writer of the Epistle, and thus revealing the extent to which Oriental religion had remoulded Judaism among the educated Jews of his time. Monotheism is strictly inconsistent with the supremacy of “merits” which is the very soul of Oriental religion. The sacred books of India contain records of saints or Rishis who by extraordinary austerities, sacrifices, and virtues so piled up their “merits” that the gods were frightened, as they were at the tower of Babel; and sometimes the gods tempted these powerful saints to commit some sin that would reduce their “merits.” The Solomonic “Proverbs” are pervaded by the Oriental doctrine of “merits”: a man is proved by test of his merits, as gold passing through the furnace (xxvii. 21); the perfect inherit good (xxviii. 10); and perhaps that sublime pedlar of transcendent gems imported along with the gold of Ophir some version of the Puranic legend of Harischandra, “the Hindu Job.” All the Jahvist adulterations of the biblical version do not conceal the fact that when Jahveh, by delivering the meritorious man up to Satan, delivered himself also into the hands of Satan, he (Jahveh) was compelled to surrender before the merits on which the man had planted himself. Jahveh reclaimed his sovereignty, but agreed that Job, who had said “God hath wronged me,” had spoken of him “the thing that is right” (xlii. 8). In the same way the storm-god Indra (the Hindu Jahveh) accompanied by all the gods, headed by Dharma (Justice), appears to Harischandra after his trials, and tells him that he, his wife and son, had, by their merits, “conquered heaven” (Markandeya Purana). The completion of these merits was when Harischandra resolved with his wife to die on the funeral pyre of their son, who, as a result of their torments, had died by a serpent’s bite. It was then that the god Indra appeared to restore the son, and admit that the just and faithful king, his wife and son, had “conquered heaven.” We are thus carried to the Solomonic affirmations that “when the whirlwind passeth the just man is on an everlasting foundation” (Prov. x. 25), that “justice delivereth from death” (x. 2), that “the just man finds a refuge in death” (xiv. 32); and we are carried forward to the Epistle to the Hebrews, where, after the last ordeal, death, the son of the heavenly king is restored to life, and Satan, who had over him the power of death, “brought to nought” (ii. 14). But further, in the Puranic legend, which from time immemorial has been a passion-play in India, Harischandra, when told that he, his wife and son, had “conquered heaven,” refused to ascend to heaven without his “faithful subjects.” “This request was granted by Indra, and after Viswamitra had inaugurated Rohitaswa, the king’s son, to be his successor, Harischandra, his friends and followers, all ascended to heaven.” Thus, in our Epistle, the son, having “learned obedience by the things which he suffered, and having been made perfect, became unto all them that obeyed him the author of eternal salvation.” “For in that he hath himself suffered being tempted, he is able to succor them that are tempted.” The subjects of King Harischandra who remained faithful to him after he was reduced to beggary, ascended with him. Faith is declared in our Epistle to be “the testing of things not seen” (xi. 1), and faithfulness is to “run with patience the course that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the captain and perfector of faithfulness, who for the joy set before him endured the stake (σταυρόν), despising shame, and hath sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (xi. 1, xii. 1, 2).

And there is also, I believe, in the scheme of redemption set forth in this Epistle, an influence from the story of King Usinára in the Mahábhárata, of which there were various versions which must have been familiar to the Buddhists in Alexandria. A dove pursued by a falcon takes refuge in the bosom of Usinára; the falcon demands its surrender. The King quotes the law of Manu that it is a great sin to abandon any being that has taken asylum with one. The falcon urges that it is the law of nature that falcons shall feed on doves, and that unless this dove is surrendered its little falcons must starve. The King offers other food, but the only substitute that is adapted to the falcon’s nature is a quantity of Usinára’s own flesh equal to the weight of the dove. To this the King agrees. Balances are produced, and the dove placed in one scale, in the other a piece of the King’s flesh, which seems large enough, but is insufficient. Though the King cuts off piece by piece all of his flesh, the dove outweighs it, until at length Usinára gets into the scale Himself. That outweighs the dove, which is really Agni, the falcon being Indra. The gods who had assumed these forms in order to test Usinára’s fidelity to the law of sanctuary, resume their shape, and the King ascends transfigured to paradise. In one version a King (Givi) sacrifices his son, Vrihad-Gasbha in obedience to sacred requirements, the story resembling that of Abraham and Isaac. Alford calls attention to the emphasis on the word “himself” in the Epistle of the Hebrews ix. 14: “How much more shall the blood of Christ, who, through the eternal Spirit offered Himself, without blemish, unto God, cleanse our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.”

Without blemish! That was the great point. The champion of the Good confronts the champion of Evil, his purpose being to conquer the last enemy, Death, by unarmed human virtue. This was the central idea in the Passion, a drama gone to pieces in the Gospels. Therefore, he did not summon legions of angels, and said to Peter, “Sheath thy sword.” Therefore, the mere lynching of Jesus, for such it was, is given the formalities of judicial procedure, in order to impress an official character on the testimonies to his innocence: Pilate, Caiaphas, Pilate’s wife, Judas, Herod, all bear witness that no evil is in him, and he challenges the High Priest’s court, “If I have uttered evil bear witness of the evil.”[5] In this passion-drama Jesus Barabbas is set beside Jesus the Christ,—officially proclaimed guilt beside officially proclaimed innocence,—and Wrath selects guilt, condemns innocence. But it was thus the first-born of Life prevailed over the first-born of Death. In that crisis the blameless man swerving not from his rectitude, established the “assembly of the first-born,” who can dwell with the living God because they have learned from their Captain how to get rid of the defilement of mortality. There is nothing vicarious in his service. The Captain represented the human race in a single combat with Satan, and he discovered for all the vulnerable point of that Adversary,—that he could not hold in sheol a perfectly sinless human being. But it still remained that without holiness no man could see the Lord. Another advantage secured by Jesus for men was that after his victory was achieved the heroic man, on resuming his previous position as Son of God, was able to add thereto what he had won as Son of Man,—the office of high priest or intercessor, who could take good care that every man who fulfilled the condition of holiness got his reward. Satan should not cheat. Nevertheless Jesus had been his own saviour, and every man must be his own saviour.

Pulpit ignorance has wrested from the Epistle to the Hebrews fragments of texts, in support of a dogma of atonement which only a fortunate lack of logic prevents from amounting to a doctrine of human sacrifice. A favorite clause is, “Without the shedding of blood there in no remission,”—which is really this epistle’s stigma on the system it is abolishing! The sacredness of the blood of Jesus was that it was the price he had to pay to the devil in order to preserve his sinlessness, and so rise from death, and demonstrate to others that they also could rise by sinlessness to eternal life. It might cost their blood also, but would be lost if they “resisted unto blood.” Jesus thus brought life and incorruption, as distinguished from living-death in sheol, to light. And the devotion to Jesus for this was due to the belief that he had laid aside his heavenly glory and become a complete man, and had thus risked his all, his greatness, his very immortality, to make for both heaven and earth the tremendous venture; the slightest misstep, the least sin, or wrath, or impatience, and he would have had his abode in sheol, in bonds of Satan, through all eternity.

When this Epistle was written the believers already found immortality in such faith; with such hope and joy before them they were able to despise sensual joys, to conquer temptations, and to fulfill those duties and conditions of personal holiness which are described in this Epistle,—“Peace with all men, and holiness without which no man can see the Lord.” The ecstasy did not last long, but it was a marvellous phenomenon while it lasted, and the most complete reflection of it may be found in this Epistle to the Hebrews, especially if it be approached by its prologue,—the “Wisdom of Solomon,”—but it is subtle, and can only be comprehended by patient and comparative studies.