Author Description

In the Odes we have few quotations or adaptations from previous writings, whether Jewish or Christian; there is little that can be traced to the Old Testament, almost nothing that is to be credited to the Gospels or other branches of the Christian literature. Their radiance is no reflection from the illumination of other days: their inspiration is first-hand and immediate; it answers very well to the summary which Aristides made of the life of the early Christian Church when he described them as indeed 'a new people with whom something Divine is mingled.' They are thus altogether distinct from the extant Psalms of Solomon. *The Church Father Lactantius quoted from the Odes as did certain Gnostics. I have not included that section as it includes only the quotations in their original languages, and I am assuming this book will be of more interest to the general reader.The Psalms of Solomon are a collection of eighteen Psalms which were written, according to the theory (see below) now generally accepted, in the middle of the first century B. C. These Psalms passed with many other Jewish writings into Christian use, being classed sometimes with the 'Apocrypha', sometimes with the 'antilegomena' [disputed writings]; but their influence on Christian literature was neither very extensive nor intense, and they had passed out of sight and almost out of memory when at the beginning of the seventeenth century they again received attention. The editio princeps was published in 1626 by John Louis de la Cerda. This edition was based, as subsequent investigation and discovery have proved, on a faulty copy of one of the eight now known Greek MSS [Manuscripts], which contain, together with other canonical and apocryphal books, the Psalms of Solomon. It may be regarded as practically certain that the Psalms were originally written in Hebrew: but this Hebrew original has perished and no testimony to it even survives. Till recently only Greek MSS. were known: now a Syriac text of the P