Of literary work that in its present form can be identified as Solomon's there is much less than in the case of David. His speech at the dedication of the Temple. (1 Kings viii, 12-21), which there is reason to think may have been originally preserved in the Book of Jashar,1 is likeliest to have been his personal utterance. Two of the Psalms (lxxii, cxxvii) are by title ascribed to him, and the sentiment and subject matter of them are not unfitting to his time; we are to remember, however, that the titles of the Psalms are later than the text and perhaps conjectural.

Two books of Scripture have his name in their titles. They are: "The Proverbs of Solomon the Son of David, King of Israel," and "The Song of Songs, which is Solomon's." The first of these, however, is confessedly a collection of utterances from various authors and ages; and at Chapter x, I, the title "The Proverbs of Solomon is repeated, as if to distinguish his work from that of others. The attribution to Solomon therefore, it would seem, may be meant to express not personal authorship but kind or style; as if in modern terms we should say Solomonic mashals, as distinguished from those of other species. As a matter of fact the mashals thus named are so different from others as to merit that distinguishing term. In the same way the "Song of Songs, which is Solomon's," may designate the highest example of that peculiar species of song the Solomonic; it is certainly very different from any other songs in the Bible. Both these books then, as it would seem, stand as monuments of the literary movement which began with the awaking of the literary sense in Solomon's time; the nature of which movement we have now to consider.

NOTE. Solomon's Fame and Name in Literature. Besides the Proverbs and the Song of Songs, which are ascribed to Solomon by name, the Book of Ecclesiastes, or Koheleth, purports, under a symbolic name meaning the "preacher " or "counselor," to give King Solomon's

1 See above, p. 60, note.

philosophy of life. Its title is, "The Words of the Preacher (Koheleth, Ecclesiastes), the Son of David, King in Jerusalem"; and in the portion from Chapter i, 12, to ii, 26, Solomon's wealth and wisdom, his use of them and its results, are ideally described. In the later times before Christ, when it was a general custom to name books for illustrious personages, one of the apocryphal books, purporting to contain wisdom that came to Solomon in answer to his prayer at Gibeon (cf. Wisdom, vii, 7, 8; ix, 7, 8), is called "The Wisdom of Solomon." There is also a collection of psalms, eighteen in number, compiled only a few decades before Christ, which, on the warrant of titles similar to those of the Davidic Psalms, is called "The Psalms of Solomon."

III. EVOLUTION OF LITERARY TYPES AND FUNCTIONS

९९

Among the types enumerated in the preceding chapter under the native mold of literary form," we have mentioned the song and the mashal as especially congenial to the Hebrew mind. These two types were the first to feel the stirring of the new spirit under the favoring conditions of the united kingdom, and the first to be molded and refined from the instinctive to the artistic. Under Solomon a differentiating and specializing process took place; giving rise, in form, to various styles of song and mashal, and in content, to a fine adjustment of each type to its fitting subject matter. The history of this process is obscure because we have only the finished books, published long afterward, to show for it; but of its vigorous beginnings in the inspiring times of Solomon, and of its cultural growth and ripening thereafter, we have no reason to doubt.

In two distinct yet harmonious lines this evolution of the native literary types may be traced, as they become more familiarized in the thought, the worship, and the education of the people. These lines extend respectively from the finer development of the song and the mashal.

I

The Lyric Strain, General and Sacred. The songs and fragments of song that up to the time of Solomon are quoted in the text of the history relate to matters of public import, such as events in the nation's experience or in the lives of eminent men. It is to this fact, indeed, that we owe their preservation at all. To the individual emotions, such as are universal to all, there is less reference. Yet here is the very feeding ground of lyric poetry: the joys and sorrows of the home, the passions and aspirations of the heart, the common experiences of life, secular and sacred. It is to these, rather than to national affairs, that the new lyrical movement seems to have been directed.

In the account of Solomon's literary versatility in I Kings iv, 29-34, we find him not alone but associated Of the Solo- with a group of men some of whose names are monic School given, all engaged in occupations of culture and learning. In other words, there is here given a glimpse of a Solomonic school, or fellowship, of which the king himself is the head and patron, sharing in the intellectual pursuits of his subjects. His own songs, the account says, were a thousand and five. It is not likely that he monopolized the lyrical activity; he was merely the leading spirit in a notable movement. Of its further history, or of works traceable to it, we have no subsequent account, except that two of the men here named, Ethan and Heman, are mentioned as the authors of Psalms, Ethan of Psa. lxxxix, and Heman of Psa. lxxxviii, and both are mentioned in 1 Chron. xv, 19, in the list of David's singers. In reading about Solomon's exploits in verse one cannot but recognize something of the amateur and craftsman. His songs were not so truly the lyric passion wreaking itself out of a full heart on life, as they were exercises in lyric art, like the work of an enthusiastic student. They were not of Biblical theme or caliber, and so have not survived.

One specimen remains to us, however, of the work of this Solomonic school, which shows that these courtiers were engaged in something more than elegant trifling. It is the Scripture book entitled "The Song of Songs, which is Solomon's." We can neither ascribe nor deny it to Solomon himself, nor are there internal marks to determine when it was written; but of the Solomonic school of lyric art it claims by title to be the supreme product. It is a cycle of exquisite love poems, the only Scripture book, indeed, dealing with the theme of sexual mating and love. The cycle has been deemed a kind of masque or drama; but a coherent plot or a consistent situation is hard to trace. There is, however, a noble consistency and beauty in the general spirit and sentiment of the book. Doubts have been expressed as to its fitting place in a Scripture canon; but if the sexual relation, most common and potent of human passions, needs light and guidance from above, surely the Bible has a legitimate mission in dealing with it. And this Song of Solomon deals with the matter in a way not unworthy of Biblical sanction. In reading it we have of course to realize that it comes to us from an Oriental race and land, with its Asiatic imagery and atmosphere, and that its scene is a royal harem. Yet out of this equivocal environment are drawn conceptions of beauty and sanity, which though richly sensuous are not at all sensual or salacious; which portray love as a sacred and spiritual thing, and woman not as the slave or the plaything of man but as an equal mate, who in her native purity and strength can hold her own personality inviolate against courts and kings. Thus we may rank the portrayal with the noblest modern ideals. Solomon had a harem which was his undoing (1 Kings xi, 1-8); Solomon's Song, whose heroine is a simple country girl sturdily loyal to her virgin love, makes the harem seem a base and paltry thing. And its net impression, refined by the matured lyric art, is that of a pure,

faithful, resolute love, on which lust and luxury have no power. Such a theme, which later times selected as the crowning lyric product of the Solomonic school, vindicates the high mission of literature, as it sets itself to put into order and beauty the common values of life.

In the literary activity of Solomon and his court we have seen how poetry was cultivated by the higher and more

Of the
Davidic
Influence

cultured classes, and in what social and secular stratum of sentiment it moved. But for the people of all classes, with their common moral and religious needs, the field was already preëmpted by the influence of David's poetical and musical gifts, and still more by the perpetuated power of his personality. According to the compiler of the Books of Chronicles it was David who, as soon as he had brought up the ark from its wanderings to his newly won capital, organized the sanctuary ritual mainly as a service of song with orchestral accompaniment (I Chron. xvi, 4-7), and who later conformed this organization by anticipation to the Temple which his son Solomon was to build (1 Chron. xxv, 1-7). This account may be, as to details, the notion of a later historian read back into the past; but what seems certain is that the soul of the Temple service, its spirit of worship and praise and confession, was a heritage not from Solomon the builder, whose tastes were quite other, but from his father David, the real founder of popular and centralized worship. In other words, the prevailing strain of the lyric art in Israel, deriving from the devout personality of David, was laid out on religious aspirations and themes. And the outcome is before us in the Book of Psalms, which from gradual growth into the hymn book of the Israelites has become, and beyond all other books remains, the hymn book of the world.

Though in a narrow critical sense we cannot ascribe individual Psalms with absolute certainty to David, in a more real and vital sense his personal stamp is upon the whole