Page:Testament of Solomon.djvu/28

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art thou frustrated? " And the demon replied: " By the great Brieus ^"

51. And I praised the Lord God of heaven and earth, and bade another demon come forward to me; and there came before me one in the form of a lion roaring. And he stood and answered me, saying: "O king, in the form which I have, I am a spirit quite incapable of being perceived. Upon all men who lie prostrate with sickness I leap, coming stealthily along; and I render the man weak, so that his habit of body is enfeebled. But I have also another glory, O king. I cast out demons, and I have legions under my control. And I am capable of being received^ in my dwelling-places, along with all the demons belonging to the legions under me," But I Solomon, on hearing this, asked him: "What is thy name?" But he answered: "Lion-bearer, Rath" in kind." And I said to him: " How art thou to be frustrated along with thy legions? What angel is it that frustrates thee? " And he answered: " If I tell thee my name, I bind not myself alone, but also the legion of demons under me."

52. So I said to him: " I adjure thee in the name of the God SabaSth, to tell me by what name thou art frustrated along with thy host ■*." And the spirit answered me: " The ' great among men,' who is to suffer many things at the hands of men, whose name is the figure 644, which is Emmanuel; he it is who has bound us, and who will then come and plunge us from the steep ° under water. He is noised abroad in the three letters which bring him down^."

53. And I Solomon, on hearing this, glorified God, and condemned his legion to carry wood from the thicket. And I condemned the

' Ppt(a). Briareus is suggested by Bornemann as the right reading, but with little probability, since Briareus would not have been turned into an angel.

" SeKTiKos seems here to bear this sense, as also in the fragment of a vei-y old commentary on the Shepherd of Hermas in the Oxyrhynchus papyri. part i, by Grrenfell and Hunt, 1898, p. 9: Soxp ScktiicSv iariv (sc. rb npotpTjTtKbv vvfvita). The dwelling-places are the pereons of whom the spirit, good or evil, takes possession. So in the Docetic Acta lohannis (ed. M. E. James) the Christ says: " I have no dwelling, and I have dwellings; I have no place, and I have places; 1 have no temple, and I have temples. . . . Behold thyself in me who address thee."

' fiaSivSs, "slender tapering" is suggested by Bornemann as the true reading, because a "staff" might be such.

  • bvvaius is the vrord used, and which I render " host."

' KprjuvoPaiTTiffei. The allusion is to the swine of Gadara.

° iv Si Tois rpial xapaKTJJpai Karafovaaiis) wepirjxoviiffoi'. The three characters are apparently the numbers 644, xV^'.