The legend of the Queen of Sheba forms not only a poetic prologue to the epical tradition of Solomon’s wisdom, but has a substantial connexion with the character of that wisdom, to whose final personification she contributed.

The corresponding Oriental stories do not necessarily deprive this legend of historic basis, but point to the region of this “Queen of the Seven (Sheba).” Those Oriental pilgrimages of eminent women to great sages, however invested with magnificence, are natural; even such romances could not have been invented unless in accordance with the genius of the country in which they were written. There is no antecedent improbability that a queen, belonging to a region in which her sex enjoyed large freedom, should have made a journey to meet Solomon.

The Abyssinians, who regard her as the founder of their dynasty, at the same time show how little characteristic of their country the legend was, by their ancient tradition, that it was the Queen of Sheba who provided that no woman should sit on the throne, forever! They claim that this Queen is referred to in Psalm xlv.—“At thy right hand doth stand the Queen, in gold of Ophir.” This psalm is Solomonic, but the reference is no doubt to the Queen Mother, Bathsheba (whose throne was on his “right hand,” 1 Kings ii. 19). Neither Naamah the Ammonitess, mother of Solomon’s successor, nor the daughter of Pharaoh, who was his especially distinguished wife, is described as a queen,—this indeed not being a Jewish title for a king’s wife. The psalm indicates much glory to be conferred on a woman by wedlock with Solomon, but not that he was to derive any honor from either or all of the “threescore queens” assigned him in later times (Cant. vi. 8). In another Solomonic Psalm (lxxii.) it is said:

No glory is here supposed to be derivable from a woman, and an inventor would probably have merely devised a saga on the last of the lines just quoted, which is adapted in 1 Kings iv. 34, to Solomon’s wisdom, or he would have imagined some instance of a particularly illustrious monarch coming to pay homage to Solomon. That the only example particularized is that of a woman carries some signs of reality.

Assuming that there was ever any King Solomon at all, this Psalm lxxii., whose Hebrew title is “Of Solomon,” might have been written in the height of his reign. The title of “God” given him in Psalm xlv. is here approximated in the opening line, “Give the King thy judgments, O Elohim,” and in the ascription to him of such virtues and such beneficent dominion, “from the river (Euphrates) to the ends of the earth,” without any further reference to God, that an indignant Jahvist expands the doxology (18, 19) to include a reclamation for Jahveh. The ancient lyric closes with verse 17, which says of Solomon:

The Jahvist answers:

Now in this beautiful poem (omitting the doxology) the elation is especially concerning some connexion with Sheba. In verse 10 it is said “The kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts”; in verse 15, “To him shall be given of the gold of Sheba.” These lines might have been written on the announcement of a royal visit, or meeting, which had not mentioned a queen. But what country is indicated by Sheba (the Seven)? In India there are seven holy rivers, and seven holy Rishis, represented by the seven stars of the Great Bear. But these correspond with the Seven Rivers of Persia which enter into the Persian Gulf, in the Avesta called SatavÆsa, a star-deity. In the YÎr Yast 9 it is said:

As there are seven heavens, there are seven earths (Karshvares), and these, as already shown (ante II.), are presided over by the “seven infinite ones” (Amesha-Spentas). Of these seven the first is Ahura Mazda himself, and of the others only one is female—ArmaÎti, genius of the earth. Of this wonderful and beautiful personification more must be said presently, but it may be said here that ArmaÎti was the spouse of Ahura Mazda, and Queen of the Seven,—the seven Ameshi-Spentas who preside respectively over the seven karshvares of the earth.

The function of ArmaÎti being to win men from nomadic life and warfare, to foster peace and tillage, she was a type of “the eternal feminine”; and such an ideal could hardly have been developed except in a region where women were held in great honour, nor could it fail to produce women worthy of honor. That such was the fact in Zoroastrian Persia is proved by many passages in the Avesta, wherein we find eminent women among the first disciples of Zoroaster. There is a litany to the Fravashis, or ever living and working spirits, of twenty-seven women, whose names are given in FavardÎn Yast (139–142). Among these was the Queen Hutaosa, converted by Zoroaster, the wife of King VÎstÂspa, the Constantine of Zoroastrianism. Hutaosa was naturally a visible and royal representative of ArmaÎti, “Queen of the Seven,” a princess of peace, a patroness of culture, to be imitated by other Persian queens.

That the sanctity of “seven” was impressed on all usages of life in Persia is shown in the story of Esther. King Ahasuerus feasts on the seventh day, has seven chamberlains, and consults the seven princes of Media and Persia (“wise men which knew the times”). When Esther finds favor of the King above all other maidens, as successor to deposed Vashti, she is at once given “the seven maidens, which were meet to be given her, out of the King’s house; and he removed her and her maidens to the best place of the house of the women.” Esther was thus a Queen of the Seven,—of Sheba, in Hebrew,—and although this was some centuries after Solomon’s time, there is every reason to suppose that the Zoroastrian social usages in Persia prevailed in Solomon’s time. At any rate we find in the ancient Psalm lxxii., labeled “Of Solomon,” Kings of Sheba (the Seven) mentioned along with the Euphrates, chief of the Seven Rivers (Zend Haptaheando); and remembering also the “sevens” of Esther, we may safely infer that a “Queen of Sheba” connoted a Persian or Median Queen.

We may also fairly infer, from the emphasis laid on “sevens” in Esther, in connexion with her wit and wisdom, that a Queen of the Seven had come to mean a wise woman, whether of Jewish or Persian origin, a woman instructed among the Magi, and enjoying the freedom allowed by them to women. There is no geographical difficulty in supposing that a Persian queen like Hutaosa, a devotee of ArmaÎti (Queen of the Seven, genius of Peace and Agriculture), might not have heard of Salem, the City of Peace, of its king whose title was the Peaceful (Solomon), and visited that city,—though of course the location of the meeting may have been only a later tradition.1

The object of the Queen’s visit to Solomon was “to test him with hard questions” as to his wisdom. It was not to discover or pay court to his wisdom, though he received from her “of the gold of Sheba” spoken of in the psalm. As a royal missionary of the Magi her ability and title to prove Solomon’s knowledge, and decide on it, are assumed in the narrative (1 Kings x.). Several sentences in her tribute to Solomon’s “wisdom and goodness” recall passages in the Psalm (lxxii.). There is here an intimation of some prevailing belief that Solomon’s wisdom was harmonious with the Zoroastrian wisdom. Whether the visit of the Queen be mythical or not, and even if both she and Solomon are regarded as mythical, the legend would none the less be an expression of a popular perception of elements not Jewish in Solomonic literature.

Of course only Biblical mythology is here referred to. The Moslem mythology of Solomon and the Queen (Balkis) has taken from the Avesta Wise King Yima’s potent ring, and his power over demons, and other fables, in most instances to be noted only as an unconscious recognition of a certain general accent common to the narratives of the two great kings. Yet it can hardly be said that the stories of Yima in the Avesta and of Solomon in the Bible are entirely independent of each other,—as in Yima’s being given by the deity a sort of choice and selecting the political career, Ahura Mazda saying: “Since thou wanted not to be the preacher and the bearer of my law, then make thou my worlds thrive, make my worlds increase: undertake thou to nourish, to rule, and to watch over my world.” Ahura Mazda requests Yima to build an enclosure for the preservation of the seeds of life (men, animals, and plants) during a succession of fatal winters, and some of the particulars resemble both the legend of the ark and that of building the temple. Yima was, like Solomon, a priest-king (he is also called “the good shepherd”); he was, like Solomon, beset by satans (daÊvas), and after a reign of fabulous prosperity he finally fell by uttering falsehood. What the falsehood was is told in the Bundahis: the good part of creation was ascribed to the evil creator.

Several other heroes of the Avesta have assisted in the idealisation of Solomon, notably King VÎstÂspa, already mentioned. Like Solomon, he is famous for his horses and his wealth. Zoroaster exhorts him, “All night long address the heavenly Wisdom; all night long call for the Wisdom that will keep thee awake.” From Zoroaster the “Young King” learned “how the worlds were arranged”; and he is advised “have no bad priests or unfriendly priests.”

It is now necessary to inquire whether there is anything corresponding to these facts in the ancient writings ascribed to Solomon. The lower criticism has little liking for Solomon, and makes but a feeble struggle for the genuineness of his canonical books against the higher criticism, which forbids us to assign any word to Solomon. But these higher critics acquired their learning while lower critics, and it is difficult to repress an occasional suspicion of the survival of an unconscious prejudice against the royal secularist, apparent in their unwillingness to admit any participation at all of Solomon in the wisdom books. Is this quite reasonable?

It is of course clear that Solomon cannot be described as the author of any book or compilation that we now possess. But neither did Boccaccio write Shakespeare’s “Cymbeline,” nor Dryden’s “Cymon and Iphigenia,” nor the apologue of the Ring in Lessing’s “Nathan the Wise,” nor Tennyson’s “Falcon,” all of which, however, are his tales. I select Boccaccio for the illustration because his defiance of “the moralities” led to his suppression in most European homes, thus facilitating the utilization of his ideas by others who derive credit from his genius, this being precisely what might be expected in the case of the great secularist of Jerusalem. For no one can carefully study the Book of Proverbs without perceiving that a large number of them never could have been popular proverbs, but are terse little essays and fables, some of them highly artistic, which indicate the presence at some remote epoch of a man of genius. And I cannot conceive any fair reason for setting aside the tradition of many centuries which steadily united the name of Solomon with much of this kind of writing, or for believing that every sentence he ever uttered or wrote is lost.

It would require a separate work to pick out from the two Anthologies ascribed to Solomon (the First, Proverbs x. i–xxii. 16; the Second, xxv–xxix), the more elaborate thoughts, and piece together those that represent one mind, even were I competent for that work. But this fine task awaits some scholar, and, indeed, the whole Book of Proverbs needs a more thorough treatment in this direction than it has received.

Of the last seven chapters of the Book of Proverbs, one (xxx.), containing the fragments of Agur and his angry antagonist, has been (vii.) considered. Chapters xxv., xxvi., xxvii., and xxxi. 10–31, may with but little elimination fairly come under their general heading, “These are also proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah, King of Judah, copied out.” Chapters xxviii. and xxix., with their flings at princes and wealth, contain many Jahvist insertions. The admirable verses in xxiv. 23–34, and those in xxxi. 10–29, 31, represent the high secular ethics of the Solomonic school.

The verses last mentioned (exaltation of the virtuous woman) are, curiously enough, blended with “The words of King Lemuel, the oracle which his mother taught him.” The ancient Rabbins identify Lemuel with Solomon, and relate that when, on the day of the dedication of the temple, he married Pharaoh’s daughter, he drank too much at the wedding feast, and slept until the fourth hour of the next day, with the keys of the temple under his pillow. Whereupon his mother, Bathsheba, entered and reproved him with this oracle. Bathsheba’s own amour with Solomon’s father does not appear to have excited any rabbinical suspicion that the description of the virtuous wife with which the Book of Proverbs closes is hardly characteristic of the woman. She was the “Queen Mother,” a part of the divine scheme, her conception of the builder of the temple immaculate, predetermined in the counsels of Jahveh.

The first nine verses of this last chapter in the Book of Proverbs certainly appear as if written at a later day, perhaps even so late as the third century before our era, and aimed at the Jahvist tradition of Solomon. Lemuel seems to be allegorical, and we here have an early instance of the mysterious disinclination to mention the great King’s name. His name, Renan assures us, is hidden under “Koheleth,” but he is not named in the text of that book or even in that of the “Wisdom of Solomon.” In Ezra v. 11 the mention of the temple as the house “which a great king of Israel builded and finished” seems to indicate a purposed suppression of Solomon’s name, which continued (Jeremiah lii. 20 is barely an exception) until this silence was broken by Jesus Ben Sira, and again by Jesus of Nazareth.

The removal of verse 30 (Proverbs xxxi.), clearly a late Jahvist protest, leaves the praise of the virtuous woman with which the book closes without any suggestion of piety. Yet we find here that “her price is far above rubies,” “she openeth her mouth with wisdom,” and one or two other tropes which probably united with some in the First Anthology to evolve more distinctly the goddess Wisdom. Some sentences of the First Anthology grew like mustard seed. “Wisdom resteth in the heart of him who hath understanding” (Proverbs xiv. 33), reappears in 1 Kings iii. 12, and in x. 24 it is definitely stated that it was the wisdom which God had put into Solomon’s heart that made all the earth seek his presence. It was a miracle they went to see; the glory is not that of Solomon, but that of God.2

The nearest approach to a personification of Wisdom in the First Anthology is Proverb xx. 15: “There is gold and abundance of pearls, but the lips of knowledge are a (more) precious jewel.” This expands in Job to a long list of precious things—gold, coral, topaz, pearls—all surpassed by Wisdom, and the similitudes journey on to the parables of Jesus, wherein the woman sweeps for the lost silver, and the man sells all he has for the pearl of price. This, however, was a comparatively simple and human development. And the first complete personification of Wisdom, growing out of “the lips of knowledge,” and perhaps influenced by the portraiture of “the virtuous woman,” is an expression of philosophical and poetic religion. This personification is in Proverbs viii. and ix., which are evidently far more ancient than the seven chapters preceding them, and no doubt constitute the original editorial Prologue to the so-called “Proverbs of Solomon,” with the exception of some Jahvist cant about “the fear of Jahveh.” We hear from “the lips of knowledge” a reaffirmation of the “excellent things” said in the Anthologies about the superiority of Wisdom to gems. (The word “ancient” given by the revisers in the margin to viii. 18 may possibly signify the antiquity of the Anthologies when this Prologue was written.) The scholarly writer of the Prologue had closely studied the ancient proverbs, and occasionally gives good hints for the interpretation of some that puzzle modern translators. Thus Wisdom, in describing herself as “sporting” (viii. 30), indicates the right meaning of x. 23 to be that while the fool finds his sport in mischief, the wise man finds his sport with wisdom. (This proverb may also have suggested the laughter of the “virtuous woman” in xxxi. 25.)

In viii. 22–31, Wisdom becomes more than a personification, and takes her place in cosmogony. This passage, which contains germs of much of our latter-day theology, must be quoted in full, and comparatively studied. Wisdom speaks:

Let us compare with this picture of Wisdom that of ArmaÎti, genius of the Earth, in the sacred Zoroastrian books. In the GÂtha Ahunavaiti, 7, it is said: “To succor this life (to increase it) ArmaÎti came with wealth, and good and true mind: she, the everlasting one, created the material world; but the soul, as to time, the first cause among created beings, was with thee” (Ahura Mazda). Thus, like Wisdom, ArmaÎti is everlasting: she was not created, but “acquired,” by the deity. When Ahura Mazda, as chief of the seven Amesha-spentas, ideally designed the world, she gave it reality, as master-builder, and, like Wisdom, hewed out the foundation pillars he had marked out,—namely, the Seven Karshvares of the earth. The opening lines of Proverbs ix. read almost like a quotation from some GÂtha:

Like Wisdom, ArmaÎti was the continual delight of the supreme God. In an ancient PÂli MS., it is said that Zoroaster saw the supreme being in heaven, with ArmaÎti seated at his side, her hand caressing his neck, and said: “Thou, who art Ahura Mazda, turnest not thy eyes away from her, and she turns not away from thee.” Ahura Mazda tells Zoroaster that she is “the house mistress of my heaven, and mother of the creatures.”3 Like Wisdom, ArmaÎti has joy in the “habitable part” of the earth, and the “sons of men,” from whom she receives especial delight (“the greatest joy”), are enumerated in the VendÎdÂd, also the places in which she has such delight. They are the faithful who cultivate the earth morally and physically, and the places so watered or drained, and homes “with wife, children, and good herds within.”

ArmaÎti has a daughter, “the good Ashi,” whose function is to pass between earth and heaven and bring the heavenly wisdom (Vohu-Mano, “Good Thought”) to mankind. The soul of the world thus reaches, and is reached by, heaven, and ArmaÎti thus becomes a personification of the combined human and superhuman Wisdom ascribed to great men, such as Solomon. At the same time the “sons of men” are all the children of ArmaÎti, and she finds delight among them. Even the rudest are restrained by her culture. “By the eyes of ArmaÎti the (demonic) ruffian was made powerless,” says Zoroaster. The spirit of the Earth, laughing with her flowers and fruits, survived in Persia the sombre reign of Islam, to sing in the quatrain of Omar KhayyÁm: “I asked my fair bride—the World—what was her dower: she answered, ‘My dower is in the joy of thy heart.’”

“The sons of men” is not an Avestan phrase, for to ArmaÎti her daughters are as dear as her sons, but we find in the VendÎdÂd “the seeds of men and women.” These are sprung from those who were selected for preservation in the Vara, or enclosure, of the first man, Yimi, made by direction of the deity, when the evil powers brought fatal winters on the world. The deformed, diseased, wicked, were excluded; the chosen people were those formed of “the best of the earth.” From long and prosperous life on earth, the Amesha of immortality, the good angel of death, conducted them to eternal happiness; they are the immortals, children of the demons being mortals. There was something corresponding to this in the Jewish idea of their being a chosen people, as distinguished from the Gentile world (see Deut. xxxii. 8), and no doubt the phrase “sons of men” represented a divine dignity afterwards expressed in the title, “Son of Man.”4

The Solomonic hymn of Wisdom at the creation (Proverbs viii. 22–31) contains other Avestan phrases. “From eternity was I existent,” recalls Zervan akarana, “boundless time,” and verse 26, relating to the earth, is still more significant: in it “the sum” has been suggested by the Revisers for (E. V.) “the highest part” (of the earth), but in either rendering it is near to the Avestan phrase, “the best of ArmaÎti” (Earth). This phrase is reproduced in the Bundahis (xv. 6), where the creator, Ahura Mazda, says to the first pair, “You are men (cf. Genesis v. 2, he ‘called their name Adam’), you are the ancestry of the world, and you are created the best of ArmaÎti (the Earth) by me.” (West’s translation. Sacred Books of the East. Vol. V., p. 54, n. 2.) The word for Earth in Proverb 26 is adamah, and in the Septuagint (various reading) it is actually translated ??a??,—ArmaÎti’s very name. We may thus find in Proverb 26 (viii.) the idea of Omar KhayyÁm, “Man is the whole creation’s summary.”

Whether there is any connexion between the Sanskrit Adima and Hebrew Adam is still under philological discussion: probably not, for their meaning is different, Adima meaning “the first,” and Adam relating to the material out of which he is said to have been formed. Adam is derived from Adamah: after all, man came from the great Woman—“the Mother of all living.”5 Adamah, according to Sale, is a Persian word meaning “red earth,” and in Hebrew also it connotes redness. ArmaÎti might have acquired an epithet of ruddiness from her union with Âtar, the genius of Fire (Fargard xviii. 51, 52. Darmesteter. Introduction, iv. 30). In Hebrew adamah combines three senses—a fortress, redness, and cultivated ground. In Proverbs (viii. 31) we have the fortress or enclosure, “the habitable part of his earth”; in verse 26 the cultivated earth, “the highest part (or sum, or best) of the dust of the earth.” The “delight” in which Wisdom dwelt (verse 30) is Eden, the garden of delight, and in verse 31 this delight associated with the human children of the earth. Here we have the elements of the narrative of the creation of Adam in Genesis, and of the garden, though clearly not derived from Genesis. And in Genesis we find something like a personification of the earth, as in ix. 13, “It (the rainbow) shall be a token of a covenant between me and the earth.”

The idea of a creative deity requiring, as in Proverbs viii., the assistance of another personal being, is foreign to Jahvism, but it is of the very substance of Zoroastrianism, and it reappears in the Elohism of Genesis. Another important and fundamental fact is, that we find in the prologue to Proverbs a deity contending against something, circumscribing forces that need control, not of his creation. It is plain that the conception of monotheistic omnipotence had not yet been formed. There are higher and lower parts of the earth.

Although there is no evidence that any such compilation as our “Genesis” existed at the time when the prologue (viii., ix.) to the “Proverbs of Solomon” was composed, the Elohistic opening of Genesis, especially in its original form, harmonises with the Parsi conflict between Light and Darkness.

The spirit of God “brooding” over the waters (Genesis i. 1) may be identified with the Wisdom of Proverbs ix. 1, who “builds her house” as the Elohim built the universe, and “hath hewn out her seven pillars” like a true ArmaÎti, “Queen of the Seven.” She is the Spirit of Light. And perhaps the darkness that was on the face of the abyss suggested the antagonistic personification in the next chapter (ix.) named by Professor Cheyne “Dame Folly.” Wisdom, having builded her house, spread her table, mingled her wine, sends forth her maidens to invite the simple to forsake Folly, enjoy her feast, and “live.” Dame Folly,—who though she has “a seat in high places” is “silly,”—clamours to every wayfarer that even the bread and water of her table, being surreptitious, are sweeter than the luxuries and wine offered by Wisdom. This appears to be the meaning of Dame Folly’s somewhat obscure invitation.

In this contrast between Wisdom inviting all to enter her house, drink her wine, and “live,” and Folly inviting them to her “Sheol,” we have nearly a quatrain of Omar KhayyÁm: “Since from the beginning of life to its end there is for thee only this earth, at least live as one who is on it and not under it.”

In the Avesta the good and wise Mother Earth (ArmaÎti) is opposed by a malign female “Drug” (demoness), whose paramours are described in Fargard xviii. (VendÎdÂd). These two are fairly represented by Wisdom and Folly as personified in Proverbs viii. and ix.

The Jahvist who in Proverbs i. 1–7 (excepting the first six verses) undertakes to edit the original and ancient editor as well as Solomon, presents the curious case of one of Dame Folly’s phantoms interpreting the words of Wisdom’s guests. Unable to comprehend their portraiture of Dame Folly, he imagines that the allusion must be to harlotry, admonishes his “son” that “Jahveh giveth wisdom,” which among other things will “deliver thee from the strange woman,” whose “house sinketh down to the underworld and her paths unto phantoms.” Which recalls the pious lady who on hearing her ritualistic pastor accused by a dissenter of leanings toward the Scarlet Woman, anxiously inquired of a friend whether she had ever heard any scandal connected with their vicar’s name!

Our Jahvist editor seems to be one who would often say of laughter “it is mad”; and naturally could not imagine how Wisdom could “sport” before the Lord (viii. 30) unless she were in some sense mad. The sport before Jahveh could only be in mockery of some sinner’s torment, like the derision ascribed to Jahveh (Psalm ii. 4); consequently our editor represents Wisdom crying abroad in the streets:

But Pliny mentions the Mazdean belief, confirmed by Parsi tradition, that Zoroaster was born laughing. To him Ahura Mazda says: “Do thou proclaim, O pure Zoroaster, the vigor, the glory, the help and the joy that are in the Fravashis (souls) of the faithful.”

However, we may see in these first seven chapters of Proverbs that Wisdom had become detached from the sons of men, in whom she had once found delight, was no longer in the human heart, but had finally ascended to wield the heavenly thunderbolts. And yet it is probable that we owe to this vindictive and menacing attitude of deified Wisdom the preservation of so many witty and sceptical things in books traditionally ascribed to Solomon. The orthodox legend being that the Lord had put supernatural wisdom into Solomon’s heart, and never revoked it despite his “idolatry” and secularism, it followed that the naughty man could not help continuing to be a medium of this divine person, Wisdom, and that it might be a dangerous thing to suppress any utterance of hers through Solomon,—unwitting blasphemy. However profane or worldly the writings might appear to the Jahvist mind, there was no knowing what occult inspiration there might be in them, and the only thing editors could venture was to sprinkle through them plenteous disinfectants in the way of “Fear-of-the-Lord” wisdom.

The proverbs in which the name Jahveh appears are not, of course, to be indiscriminately rejected as entirely Jahvist interpolations. It seems probable that little more than the word Jahveh has been supplied in some of these,—e. g., xix. 3, xx. 27, xxi. 1, 3, xxviii. 5, xxix. 26. But in a majority of cases the proverbs containing the name Jahveh are ethically and radically inharmonious with the substance and spirit of the book as a whole, which is founded on the supremacy of human “merits” as fully as Zoroastrianism, in which salvation depends absolutely on Good Thought, Good Word, Good Deed. In dynamic monotheism (as distinguished from ethical) of which Jahvism is the ancient and Islam the modern type, the doctrine of human “merits” is inadmissible: a man’s virtues are not his own, and in Jahveh’s sight they are but “filthy rags,” except so far as they are given by Jahveh. But in the Solomonic proverbs the highest virtues, and the supreme blessings of the universe, are obtained by a man’s own wisdom, character, and deeds. And in some cases the claims for Jahveh appear to have been inserted as if in answer or retort to proverbs ignoring the participation of any deity in such high matters. I quote a few instances, in which the antithesis turns to antagonism:

In several other cases entire proverbs seem to be inserted for the correction of preceding ones,—these being not always understood by the interpolator:

In one instance the Jahvist has made a slip by which his hand is confessed. In xvii. 3 we find:

But he omitted to notice the repetition in xxvii. 21, where we find the profound sentence which the Jahvist had reduced to commonplace:

The Jahvist spirit is also discoverable in xx. 22:

Also in xxv. 21–2:

A similar mean and vindictive spirit is shown in xxiv. 18, following a magnanimous proverb; but in verse 29, probably more ancient than 18, we find the unqualified rebuke of retaliation:

It was this generosity that Buddha exercised,7 and Jesus; and it was left to Paul to recover the Jahvist modifications of Solomon’s wisdom in order to adulterate for hard Romans the humane spirit of Jesus (Romans xii. 19, 20). The Solomonic sentences are normally so magnanimous as to throw suspicion on any clause tainted with smallness or vulgarity. The pervading spirit is, “The benevolent heart shall be enriched, and he who watereth shall himself be watered.”

There is one proverb (xiv. 32) which suggests a belief in immortality, or possibly in the Angel of Death:

According to the Avesta every man is born with an invisible noose around his neck. When a good man dies the noose falls, and he passes to a beautiful region where he is met by a maid, to whom he says, “Who art thou, who art the fairest I have ever seen?” She answers, “O thou of good thoughts, good words, good deeds, I am thy actions.” The evil man meets a leprous hag, embodiment of his actions, who by his noose drags him down through the evil-thought hell, the evil-word hell, the evil-deed hell, to the region of “Endless Darkness” (Yast xxii.). This darkness may be metaphorically spoken of in Proverbs xx. 20:

But generally the allusions to death in the Solomonic proverbs do not seem to allude to physical death. In x. 2 “virtue delivereth from death” is in antithesis to the unprofitableness of evil treasures, and in 16:

Here “life” and “sin” are in opposition. Other sentences to be compared are:

(In the last clause “it” probably refers to “life,” unless the pronoun be cancelled altogether.)

The two proverbs last quoted may be usefully compared with the ancient Prologue (viii. ix.) already referred to in this chapter, as they are there reproduced pictorially in Wisdom and Dame Folly sitting at their respective doors. Wisdom offers long life and happiness:

Dame Folly tries to turn into her by-path those who are “proceeding straight in their course” (ix. 15), but her victim—

The same Hebrew word Rephaim (phantoms or shades) is used here and in xxi. 16.

All of these references to death and the underworld (sheol), except perhaps xiv. 32, refer to the living death, moral and spiritual, which is of such vast and fundamental significance in Zoroastrian religion. In this religion the evil power is “all death.” The universe is divided by and into “the living and the not living.”8 “When these two Spirits came together they made first Life and Death,”—words sometimes used as synonymous with the “Good and the Evil Mind.” Ahura Mazda representing all the forces that work for health and life, Angromainyu (Ahriman) all that work for disease and destruction, have ranged with them all animals and plants, on one side or the other, in this great conflict. The life of an Ahrimanian creature is “incarnate death.” (Darmesteter’s Introduction to the VendÎdÂd, v. 11.) His destructiveness is equally against virtue, wisdom, peace, health, happiness, life, and all of these, not merely physical dissolution, are included in his Avestan title, “The Fiend who is all death.” He is the Abaddon of Revelation ix. 11, also he “that had the power of death” in Hebrews ii. 14, and probably came into both of these from Proverbs xxvii. 20:

Dr. Inman (Ancient Faiths, i., p. 180) connects Abaddon with “Abadan (cuneiform), the lost one, the sun in winter, or darkness,” which conforms with the Avestan Ahriman, who is emphatically a winter-demon, his hell being in the north (cf. Jeremiah i. 14 and elsewhere), and is the natural adversary of the Fire-worshipper.

Among the Zoroastrians there were not only Towers of Silence (Dakhma) for the literally dead, but also for the confinement of those tainted by carrying corpses, or by any contact with the death-fiend’s empire, such as being struck with temporary death. “The unclean,” says Darmesteter, “are confined in a particular place, apart from all clean persons and objects, the ArmÊst-gÂh, which may be described, therefore, as the Dakhma for the living.” Here then are the dead-alive guests of Dame Folly (Proverbs ix. 15), who opposes Wisdom, as Ahriman created Akem-Mano (evil thought) to oppose Vohu-Mano (good thought), and here is the assembly that might give the Solomonic proverb its metaphor:

The Zoroastrian books from which I have been quoting contain passages of very unequal date, but it is the opinion of Avestan scholars that most of them are from very ancient sources, pre-Solomonic, and there is no chronological difficulty in supposing that such institutions as the ArmÊst-gÂh, for the separation of the unclean, should not have been well known in ancient Jerusalem before the corresponding levitical laws concerning the unclean and the leprous existed.

The Book of Proverbs was also a growth, and although, as has been stated, there is reason to regard as later additions most of the proverbs containing the word Jahveh, as they are inconsistent with the general ethical tenor of the book, there are several in which that name is evidently out of place. Even in the editorial Prologue we can hardly recognize orthodox Jahvism in the conception of a being, Wisdom, not created by Jahveh yet giving him delight and some kind of assistance at the creation; and nowhere else in the Old Testament do we find such an idea as that of xx. 27, “The spirit of a man is Jahveh’s lamp,” or in xix. 17:

But in the Zoroastrian religion men and women render assistance and encouragement to the gods, and we find the chief deity, Ahura Mazda, saying to Zoroaster concerning the Fravashis, or souls, of holy men and women: “Do thou proclaim, O pure Zoroaster, the vigor and strength, the glory, the help and the joy, that are in the Fravashis of the faithful ... do thou tell how they came to help me, how they bring assistance unto me.... Through their brightness and glory, O Zoroaster, I maintain that sky there above.” FavardÎn Yast, 1, 2.) As Frederick the Great said, “a king is the chief of subjects,” so with Zoroaster Ahura Mazda is the chief of the faithful; or, as Luther said, “God is strong, but he likes to be helped.”

The similitude in Proverbs xx. 27 is especially important in our inquiry:

The word for “spirit” here is Nishma, which occurs in but one other instance in the Bible, namely, in Job xxvi. 4. Job asks:

This chapter of Job (xxvi.) is closely related to Proverbs viii. and ix., both in thought and phraseology: the Rephaim, or phantoms, the “pillars,” the ordering of earth and clouds, the boundary on the deep; and there is an allusion to “the confines of Light and Darkness,” which point to the domains of Wisdom and Dame Folly. Job and the proverbialist surely got these ideas from the same source, and also the word nishma, translated “spirit,” which throughout the Old Testament is ruach, save in the two texts indicated. But there is no text in the Bible where ruach, spirit, or soul, is associated with light like the nishma of the proverb, and in Job nishma evidently means a superhuman spirit. Now there is a Chaldean word, nisma, which in the Persian Bundahis appears as nismÔ, and is translated by West, “living soul.” The ordinary word for soul in the Parsi scriptures seems to be rÛbÂn, and West regards the two words as meaning the same thing, the breath, or soul, basing this on the following passage of the Bundahis, representing the separation of the first mortal into the first human pair, MÂshya and MÂshyoi:

With all deference to the learned translator, I cannot think his exegesis here quite satisfactory. In the first sentence nismÔ is the breath of God; and although in the second the same word is used for the human soul, the writer seems to have aimed in the last sentence at a distinction: the divine breath or spirit (nismÔ) creates a soul (rÛbÂn), to receive which the plant is transformed into a body fitted for the “activity” of an imbreathed soul. West twice translates nismÔ “living soul,” but rÛbÂn only “soul.” Does not this indicate Ahura Mazda as the source of divine life, as in Genesis ii. 7, where Jahveh-Elohim breathes into man, who becomes a “living soul,”—a being within the domain of the god of life, not subject to the god of death? Is it not his rÛbÂn that is the image of nismÔ? (Cf. Genesis ix. 5, 6.)

Turning now to the Avesta, we find the famous Favardin Yast, a collection of litanies and ascriptions to the Fravashis. “The Fravashi,” says Darmesteter, “is the inner power in every being that maintains it and makes it grow and subsist. Originally the Fravashis were the same as the Pitris of the Hindus or the Manes of the Latins, that is to say, the everlasting and deified souls of the dead; but in course of time they gained a wider domain, and not only men, but gods and even physical objects, like the sky and the earth, had each a Fravashi.” “The Fravashi was independent of the circumstances of life or death, an immortal part of the individual which existed before man and outlived him.”

In Yast xxii. 39, 40, it is said: “O Maker, how do the souls of the dead, the Fravashis of the holy Ones, manifest themselves?” Ahura Mazda answered: “They manifest themselves from goodness of spirit and excellence of mind.”

Favardin Yast, 9: “Through their brightness and glory, O Zarathrustra, I maintain the wide earth,” etc. 12: “Had not the awful Fravashis of the faithful given help unto me, those animals and men of mine, of which there are such excellent kinds, would not subsist; strength would belong to the fiend.”

In other verses these Fravashis (the word means “protectors”) help the children unborn, nourish health, develop the wise. The imagery relating to them is largely related to the stars, of which many are guardians. These are probably the origin of the Solomonic similitude of reason, “The spirit (nishma) of man is the lamp of——?”

With all of these correspondences between the Solomonic proverbs, nothing is more remarkable than their originality, so far as any ancient scriptures are concerned. While they are totally different from the Psalms, in showing man as a citizen of the world, relying on himself and those around him for happiness, and exalting nothing above human virtue and intelligence, without any religious fervor or wrath, the proverbialist is equally far from the ethical superstitions of Zoroastrian religion, which abounds in fictitious “merits” and anathematises fictitious immoralities. It is as if some sublime Eastern pedlar and banker of ethical and poetic gems, who had come in contact with Oriental literatures, had separated from their liturgies and prophecies the nuggets of gold and the precious stones, polishing, resetting, and exciting others to do the like. At the same time many of the sentences are the expressions of an original mind, a man of letters, neither Eastern nor Oriental, and these may be labelled with the line of the Persian poet Faizi: “Take Faizi’s DÍwÁn to bear witness to the wonderful speeches of a freethinker who belongs to a thousand sects.”