Solomon

Solomon (Salomon, Salomo, Suleimán, Solyman; Heb. Shêlômô, from shêlôm, 'peace,' and so meaning 'the Peaceful,' like Ger. Friedrich), the second son of David and Bathsheba, successor of the former on the throne of the Israelitish kingdom for forty years (1015-977 B.C.). See Jews, Vol. VI. p. 323. In later Jewish and Mohammedan literature Solomon appears not only as the wisest of men, but as gifted with power to control the spirits of the invisible world. As the builder of the Temple his name is much quoted in the literature of Freemasonry (q.v.). For the so-called Song of Solomon, see CANTICLES; for the other biblical works long attributed to Solomon, see BIBLE, ECCLESIASTES, PROVERBS. The Wisdom of Solomon, one of the books of the Apocrypha (q.v.), makes a claim, real or hypothetical, to have been written by Solomon, but from internal evidence it is obviously the work of an Alexandrian Jew, written in the period 150-50 B.C. The book is a hymn in praise of Wisdom—the Wisdom of Proverbs (q.v.), but containing approximations to the doctrine of the Logos (q.v.), and combines the ethical doctrine and speculation of the Hebrews with Platonic and Stoic philosophy. There are commentaries on it by Grimm (1860), Gutberlet (Münster, 1874), and Deane, The Book of Wisdom (1881). The Psalms of Solomon, also called the Psalms of the Pharisees, were apparently written in Hebrew by a Pharisaic Jew in Jerusalem about 70-40 B.C., and are a protest against modern corruptions. They are an imitation of the canonical psalms, and seem to have been known by the authors of much apocryphal and later Jewish literature. There is an edition of the existing Greek text by Ryle and James (1892); see Moncure D. Conway, Solomon and the Solomonic Literature (1900).