But we are also informed that the talents of Solomon were neither peculiar to him, nor exercised on different subjects from those of foreign sages. The precise meaning of the Hebrew m'shālīm in 1 Kings iv. 32 is suggested by ver. 33. The word seems to mean moralising similitudes[1] derived partly from the animal, partly from the vegetable kingdom (for Lord Bacon's view,[2] hinted in the New Atlantis, is more plausible than sound). Was I not right in saying that the traditional notices of Solomon's wisdom do not agree with the title of our anthology? I wish that it were otherwise. How gladly one would see a few of Solomon's genuine utterances (whether proverbs, or similitudes, or fables) incorporated into one or another of the Hebrew Scriptures!
I think however that it is unfair both to the compiler and to the editor who repeats his statement (i. 1) to take the ascription of these proverbs to Solomon literally. Accuracy in the details of literary history was not a qualification which would seem important to an Israelite. The name of Solomon was attached (for dogmatism here seems permissible) to these choice specimens of Hebrew proverbiology simply from a very characteristic hero-worship. Solomon had in fact become the symbol of plain ethical 'wisdom' just as David had become the representative of religious lyric poetry. We may see this from the alternative title of the Book of Proverbs in both Jewish and Christian writings—'Book of Wisdom;'[3] still more from the fiction of Solomon's authorship of Ecclesiastes, and(see especially Eusebius, H. E., iv. 22).]
- ↑ Dr. Grätz is of opinion that Solomon was a fabulist like Jotham; in the text I have followed Josephus (Ant. vii. 2, 5). Legend related how the wise king, like the early men in African folk-lore (Max Müller, Hibbert Lectures, p. 116), talked with (not merely of) beasts, birds, and fishes, but delighted most in the birds.
- ↑ This was also the opinion of Ewald (History, iii. 281). It might now be urged in its favour that Assurbanipal's library contained bilingual lists of animals, vegetables, and minerals. But remember that the Assyrians were incomparably more civilised than the Israelites, and had both a lexicographical and a scientific interest in making these lists, and above all that Solomon is not stated to have written, but only to have spoken.
- ↑ See the Tosefoth to the Talmudic treatise Baba bathra, 14b), where the name is given both to Proverbs and to Ecclesiastes. It is however more commonly found in Christian than in Jewish literature, often under the fuller form [Greek: ê panaretos sophia
