The Christ Odes

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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Irish1975
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The Christ Odes

Post by Irish1975 »

The Odes of Solomon might be an underestimated text for the study of Christian origins. Two important facts:

  • the name Jesus nowhere appears in the Odes of Solomon
  • the Odes refer to one or several figures who are "the beloved," "the son," "the son of God," "the son of the Most High," "the light," "the logos," "the Lord," "the savior," and indeed, "the messiah/christos/anointed."

There is an awkward uncertainty in scholarship whether to classify these texts as OT apocrypha or as NT apocrypha. They were passed down from antiquity alongside the Psalms of Solomon, which are indisputably from the 1st BCE. Thus James Charlesworth published his translation of the Odes in Volume 2 of his collection of "Old Testament Pseudepigrapha." By contrast, Matthew Lattke, "the world's foremost authority" on the Odes, writes in his exhaustive commentary for the Hermeneia series,
"In the index of early Christian literary history, the Odes of Solomon, in the widest sense, should be entered among the New Testament rather than the Old Testament apocrypha and pseudepigrapha." (Odes of Solomon: a Commentary, tr. Marianne Ehrhardt, Fortress Press, 2009), p. 12.
Meanwhile Bart Ehrman, America's pre-eminent scholar of the New Testament and early Christianity, excludes them from his popular anthology of New Testament apocrypha (Lost Scriptures: Books that did not make it into the New Testament, Oxford, 2003).

Dating the Odes precisely is probably impossible. Lattke gives a firm terminus ante quem of late 2nd century. This is based on the appearance of Ode 11 in the Greek papyrus P. Bodmer XI, as well as "early testimonies and citations." No specific evidence exists, however, for a terminus post quem. Everything comes down to assumptions about what historical context makes best sense, all things considered. Some of the language is typical of Hellenistic Judaism, and some of it is gnostic or "tinged with" gnostic themes (Lattke). Ultimately there is only one elephant in this room: the reference, or lack thereof, to Jesus of Nazareth, savior and Christ. On this matter it is necessary to read the Odes oneself, and not to rely on scholarly assurances about historical origins and references.

The Odes contain 7 occurences of the term christos/messiah/anointed one. That is, occurences of the Syriac emphatic passive participle msah or msiha: 9:3, 17:16, 24:1, 29:6, 39:11, 41:3, and 41:15. Ode 36 contains a non-substantive use of the verb. Below I have typed out in full these "Christ Odes" from the Lattke/Ehrhardt translation. (Lattke maintains that Greek, not Syriac, is the original language of the Odist(s), and so I have used the Greek transliteration of key terms such as christos, gnosis, and pleroma.)

There is much more to be said about the Odes of Solomon regarding their possible significance in the study of Christian origins. (Rakovsky recently started a thread about them with a different focus.)


Ode 9

Open your ears and I shall speak to you.
Give me your soul, that I may also give you my soul.
The word of the Lord and the intentions of his will
are the holy thought which he thought about his Christos.
For in the will of the Lord is your life,
and his mind is eternal life,
and imperishable is your pleroma.
Be rich in God the Father
and receive the mind of the Most High.
Be strong and be redeemed by his grace.
For I proclaim peace to you, his holy ones,
so that all of those who hear should not fall in the war,
and those, also, who knew him may not perish,
and that those who will receive will not be ashamed.
The eternal crown is truth —
blessed are those who put it on their head —
a stone of great price,
for there were wars on account of the crown.
And righteousness took it and gave it to you,
put on the crown in the true covenant of the Lord.
And all those who were victorious will be written in his book,
for their recording in the book is your victory.
And Victory sees you before her
and wills that you are to be saved.
Hallelujah.


Ode 17

I was crowned by my God, and he is my living wreath.
And I was justified by my Lord, and my salvation is imperishable.
I was released from vanities and am not a man condemned.
My bonds were severed by …
I received the face and figure of a new person.
And I walked in it and was saved.
And the thought of truth led me
and I followed it and did not go astray.
And all who saw me were amazed,
and I seemed to them like a stranger.
And he who knew made me great,
the Most High in his complete pleroma.
And he glorified me by his benevolence
and lifted up my gnosis to the height of truth.
And thence he gave me the way of his steps.
And I opened the gates that were shut,
and broke the bars of iron.
My own iron glowed and melted before me.
And nothing seemed shut to me,
because I was the opening of everything.
And I went to all my shut-in ones to set them free,
lest I leave any who is bound or who binds.
And I gave my gnosis without jealousy
and my consolation through my love.
And I sowed my fruits in hearts
and transformed them in me.
And they received my blessing and lived,
and were gathered to me and were saved,
because they were my members
and I their head.
Glory to thee, our head, Lord Christos.
Hallelujah.


Ode 24

The dove flew onto the head of our Lord Christos, because he was her head.
And she cooed over him, and her voice was heard.
And the inhabitants were afraid, and the sojourners were disturbed.
The birds gave up their wing, and all creeping things died in their hole.
And the primal deeps were opened and covered.
And they sought the Lord like those who are about to give birth,
but he was not given to them for food, because he was not their own.
But the primal deeps were submerged in the submersion of the Lord,
and perished in that thought in which they had been from before.
For they were destructive from the beginning,
and the goal of their destruction was life.
And all that was lacking perished through them,
because they could not give the word, that they might abide.
And the Lord destroyed the thoughts of all those with whom the truth was not.
For they lacked wisdom, those who were arrogant in their heart.
And they were rejected, because the truth was not with them.
For the Lord showed his way, and spread out his grace.
And those who knew it know his holiness.
Hallelujah.


Ode 29

The Lord is my hope; I shall not be ashamed in him.
For according to his glory he made me,
and according to his grace he also gave to me,
and according to his mercy he raised me up,
and according to his majesty he exalted me.
And he caused me to ascend from the depths of Sheol,
and from the mouth of death he drew me.
And I humbled my enemies, and he justified me by his grace.
For I believed in the Christos of the Lord,
and I saw that he is the Lord.
And he showed me his sign, and led me by his light
and gave me the rod of his power,
that I might subdue the thoughts of the peoples;
and humble the tyranny of the mighty,
and make war by his word,
and take the victory by his power.
And the Lord cast down my enemy by his power,
and he became like chaff that the wind carries away.
And I gave praise to the Most High,
because he made great his servant
and the son of his handmaid.
Hallelujah.


Ode 39

Raging rivers, the power of the Lord,
that turn head downward those who despise him,
and entangle their steps
and destroy their fords,
and seize their bodies
and ruin their souls,
for they are more sudden than lightnings
and faster.
But those who cross them in faith will not be disturbed,
and those who walk in them without blemish will not be perturbed.
For the Lord is a sign on the rivers,
and the sign is the way of those who cross in the name of the Lord.
Put on, therefore, the name of the Most High and know him;
then you shall cross without danger while the rivers will be obedient to you.
The Lord bridged them by his Logos,
and the Logos went and crossed them on foot.
And his footprints remained on the waters and were not destroyed,
but they were like wood that is truly fixed.
And on this side and on that the waves rose up,
but the footprints of our Christos Lord stand firm
and are not blotted out or destroyed.
And a way has been established for those who cross after him,
and for those who follow the walk of his faith and revere his name.
Hallelujah.


Ode 41

Let us praise the Lord, all his children,
and accept the truth of his faith.
And with him his children will be known;
therefore let us sing in his love!
We rejoice in the Lord by his grace,
and life we receive by his Christos.
For a great day has shone upon us,
and wonderful is he who gave of his praises.
So we will all league together on the name of the Lord,
and we will honor him in his goodness.
And may our faces shine in his light,
and our hearts meditate on his love by night and by day.
Let us exult out of the exultation over the Lord!
They will be amazed, all those who see me,
because I am of another race.
For the Father of truth remembered me,
he who possessed me from the beginning.
For his wealth begat me,
and the thought of his heart.
And his Logos is with us in all our way:
the savior who gives life and does not reject our souls,
the man who was humbled and exalted by his own righteousness.
The Son of the Most High
has appeared in the pleroma of his Father,
and the light dawned from that Logos
that was in him from the beginning.
The Christos in truth is one,
and he was known from the foundation of the world,
that he might give life to souls forever by the truth of his name.
A new hymn to the Lord from those who love him.
Hallelujah.


Ode 36

The spirit of the Lord rested upon me,
and she lifted me up to the height
and set me on my feet in the height of the Lord
before his pleroma and his glory.
While I gave praise by the composition of his odes,
she brought me forth before the face of the Lord.
And although I was a son of man,
I was called the shining one, the son of God,
while I was glorious among the glorious
and was great among the great.
For according to the greatness of the Most High,
so she made me,
and according to his renewal he renewed me.
And he anointed me from his perfection,
and I became one of those beside him.
And my mouth was opened like a cloud of dew,
and my heart gushed forth a flood of righteousness.
And my drawing near was in peace,
and I was established in the spirit of the plan of salvation.
Hallelujah.

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Ben C. Smith
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Re: The Christ Odes

Post by Ben C. Smith »

Possibly of interest: my thread about the cruciform posture described several times in the Odes; and, for that same thread, the quotations of the Odes found in the Pistis Sophia and in Lactantius.
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Re: The Christ Odes

Post by Ben C. Smith »

Stevan Davies, in a republished version of Spirit Possession and the Origins of Christianity, includes an appendix entitled "On the Odes of Solomon as Evidence for a Pre-Christianity," in which he argues that the Odes represent a sect which flourished before Christianity came along. His conclusions:

I propose that the following occurred:

A: Before 25 C.E. there was a network of communities stretching from Jerusalem to Damascus whose religious ideas are to some degree preserved for us through some of the hymns they chanted, the Odes of Solomon. Those communities believed that humans could be transformed into Christ or the Son of God through an experience understood in terms of the Spirit that we can understand in terms of the generic category of spirit possession.

B: Jesus of Nazareth was affiliated with or influenced by one of those communities. He came to understand himself as one transformed into Son of God and Christ through an experience understood in terms of the Spirit. He was rather widely regarded as one transformed into Son of God or the Holy One of God and thereby was able to have a brief but very successful career as an exorcist-healer and to gather a cadre of associates who regarded him as being, uniquely, Christ and Son of God.

C: The communities of Odes Judaism were persecuted through Judean police power and Paul carried out such persecution. However, Paul, to his surprise, spontaneously experienced what those communities advocated, believed that the Son of God had been revealed in him, and he began to spread their form of religion into Gentile areas. Paul understood the Odes religion in reference to the much more public career of Jesus of Nazareth, whose associates identified him as crucified and risen Christ. Paul conflated the Odes religion with the idea that Jesus is Christ to produce a form of Christianity that offered people the possibility of identification through the Spirit with Jesus Christ crucified.

D: Jesus’ associates, who eventually came to understand him to have been the unique Son of God and to have been the only Christ, initially had “pentecostal” experiences of Spirit possession that were thought to derive from Jesus Christ now in heaven with God. The success of Christianity in spreading throughout the Roman Empire was based largely on the success of Christian missionaries in inducing Spirit possession in people in diverse areas, presumably through methods similar to those that are utilized by Pentecostal missionaries today.

E: Johannine Christians believed that possession by the spirit Paraclete would transform them so that they might believe that Jesus dwells in them and that they can speak words of the Spirit, understood to be Jesus’ words recalled to them. Their experiences meant to them that they are now the presence of the Son of God, Jesus, on the earth; it is possible that some of the communities of Odes Judaism became Johannine Christian churches. The Johannine community may be the principal form in which Odes Judaism continued to exist after the rise of Christianity oriented to Jesus of Nazareth.

F. By the mid-second century Jesus the Christ came to be regarded as a separate divine being to be worshipped as God. The Spirit was separated out to be an independent divine Person. The Christian religion ceased to be fundamentally concerned with Spirit-possession, which was left to fringe groups and heretical cults.

Not sure how much of this (if any) I buy, but it is interesting. I do think that certain assumptions that the Odes, where they seem to parallel material from the canonical gospels, must depend upon those gospels are just that: assumptions. I would like to see more detailed argumentation for the order of development in those cases.
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Re: The Christ Odes

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Ben C. Smith wrote: Thu May 30, 2019 8:02 am Possibly of interest: my thread about the cruciform posture described several times in the Odes; and, for that same thread, the quotations of the Odes found in the Pistis Sophia and in Lactantius.
Thanks for raising the cross/wood issue. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that Charlesworth's translation (used for Early Jewish & Christian Writings) is, to put it kindly, tendentious:

27:1-3
I extended my hands and hallowed my Lord,
For the expansion of my hands is His sign.
And my extension is the upright cross.
Hallelujah.

42:1-6
I extended my hands and approached my Lord, for the expansion of my hands is His sign.
And my extension is the upright cross, that was lifted up on the way of the Righteous One.
And I became useless to those who knew me not, because I shall hide myself from those who possessed me not.
And I will be with those who love me.
All my persecutors have died, and they sought me, they who declared against me, because I am living.
Then I arose and am with them, and will speak by their mouths.

I don't know whose translation you quoted in that thread, but here it is:

Odes of Solomon 27.1-3: 1 I stretched out my hands and sanctified my Lord, 2 for the extension of my hands is His sign, 3 and my expansion is the upright tree.

Odes of Solomon 42.1-6: 1 I stretched out my hands and approached my Lord, 2 for the stretching of my hands is His sign. 2 My expansion is the outspread tree which was set up on the way of the Righteous One. 4 And I became of no account to those who did not take hold of me and I shall be with those who love me. 5 All my persecutors are dead; and they sought after me who hoped in me, because I was alive. 6 And I rose up and am with them; and I will speak by their mouths.

And here is the Lattke/Ehrhardt translation of the same:

27:1-3
I stretched out my hands and hallowed my Lord,
because the spreading out of my hand is his sign,
and my stretching [up] is the wood,
which is upright/correct.

42:1-6
I stretched out my hands and drew near to my Lord,
because the spreading out of my hands is his sign,
and my stretching [up] is the straight wood,
that was hung upon the way of the upright one.
I became useless to those who knew me,
because I will hide myself from those who did not hold fast to me,
and I will be with those who love me.
All my persecutors died.
And those who proclaimed me sought me,
because I am living.
And I stood (up/there) and am with them,
and will speak by their mouths.

Now where is this "cruciform posture"? Where is there even a faint allusion to a crucifixion? There is tree imagery, a commonplace in Hebrew scripture, eg Psalm 1. But "the straight wood that was hung upon the way of the upright one" is hard to make any sense of.
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Re: The Christ Odes

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Irish1975 wrote: Thu May 30, 2019 10:25 amI don't know whose translation you quoted in that thread....
It was the 1926 translation by Rutherford H. Platt, Junior: https://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/fbe/index.htm. I think I used it mainly because it is freely available and easily accessible online.
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Re: The Christ Odes

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Lattke's summary of what he believes to be the place of the Odes "in Antique Religion and Literature" is worth close attention.

Jewish influence--
  • Greek Old Testament (LXX): Genesis, Exodus, Isaiah, Psalms, and Proverbs
  • Deuterocanonical/Apocryphal: Sirach and Wisdom
  • DSS: 1QH (Thanksgiving hymns) & 1QS (Rule of the Community)
Gnostic "tinge"--
  • "...the gnostic origin and character of a considerable portion of its imagery and metaphorical language cannot be doubted" (Helmut Koester)
  • "...there is no denying the parallels with passages in the Nag Hammadi tractates, especially with the Gospel of Truth."
  • Middle Platonism
"Christian Whole"--
"There can be no doubt that the Odes of Solomon were assembled [composed? ] in the early Christian era and circulated among Christians in later times. Even though some of the Odes can find a fitting place in early Judaism and others have a more pronounced Gnostic tinge, the influence of the writings that were to find a place in the canon of the New Testament is felt [felt? ] nearly throughout. The dependence of the Odes of Solomon on--or their relation to--the Johannine corpus has always been highlighted. But it only became clear with the completion of this commentary that in addition to the pseudo- and deutero-Pauline letters (especially Colossians, Ephesians, and 1 Timothy), Hebrews, and the letters ascribed to Peter (1 Peter), all seven of the authentic Pauline epistles, the Synoptic Gospels (especially Matthew), and possibly Revelation had all exerted a quite surprising influence in the shaping of the Odes of Solomon. This observation urges caution in putting the date of the Odes too close to the turn from the first to the second century CE"

(idem, pp. 13-14).
(emphasis and bracketed comments added)
To which Stevan Davies replies,
"All that, and yet there is not one quotation or clear allusion from any of those texts in any of the Odes!"
Spirit Possession & the Origins of Christianity, "On the Odes of Solomon as Evidence for a Pre-Christianity" (Bardic Press, 2014), p. 270.
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Re: The Christ Odes

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Lattke seems to accept that there are in fact allusions to NT Gospels, Acts, Revelation and Letters in them, and most translations seem to make the allusions conform to the wording of NT books.

Davies may be suggesting that those translations misleadingly play with the words to make them fit NT phrases. He sees Jesus as more of a Shaman than Judean sage, so I think he wants to distance his shaman Jesus from any sort of NT conception of Jesus.

Personally I did see allusions to Christ theology in them but there is definitely unwillingness to directly mention Jesus' name. The idea of a "christ" (a person with an anointed purpose to fulfill) has gone through several iterations in NT literature.

First there was the idea that Jesus was anointed to lead Israel into a blessed millennial age where the nations would be ruled with a rod of iron to punish them for oppressing the Judeans. I do not think the Odes reflect this kind of "anointing."

After the Judean War of 66-74 CE, with the destruction of the temple which had served as the "capital" of this kingdom on earth, and the attempts by all sides to effect ethnic cleansing, gentiles of the Jesus movement came to reject this Judean POV and reasoned that Jesus' anointing was of a spiritual kind aimed at individual relationships with a decidedly kind and non-judgmental God. Now that seems to be what the Odes are all about.

I'm thinking that the reluctance to mention Jesus' name may relate to the compiler/author/redactor's wish to distance his christ spirit with Judean messianism of the Bar Kosiba rebellion, so perhaps a mid to late 2nd century CE date of production?

DCH :roll:
Last edited by DCHindley on Thu May 30, 2019 6:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Christ Odes

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DCHindley wrote: Thu May 30, 2019 6:01 pmI'm thinking that the reluctance to mention Jesus' name may relate to the compiler/author/redactor's wish to distance his christ spirit with Judean messianism of the Bar Kosiba rebellion, so perhaps a mid to late 2nd century CE date of production?
I think it was Andrew Criddle, on this very forum, who suggested a reason for the omission of the name Jesus, even if the author(s) happened to know about Jesus Christ: if the fiction is that the Odes are songs composed by Solomon, then Solomon may well be imagined as writing about the Messiah (= Christ) without actually giving him a proper name (= Jesus), just as the Hebrew scriptures speak of a Messiah without giving him a proper name (with perhaps a couple of exceptions, including Emmanuel).
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Re: The Christ Odes

Post by Irish1975 »

Thanks DCHindley for your comments.
DCHindley wrote: Thu May 30, 2019 6:01 pm Lattke seems to accept that there are in fact allusions to NT Gospels, Acts, Revelation and Letters in them
I think it is more accurate to say that Lattke wants to accept that there are in fact NT allusions in the Odes. He is very careful in his wording. He says that the "influence" is "felt": it's there, even though he can't produce any actual evidence, any specific instance, proving that it's there. He also says regarding the Johannine writings that there is "dependence or relation." If he could prove that John came before the Odes and inspired them, he would definitely say so. He does not know that there is anything more than "a relation" between the two sets of texts, which allows the possibility that the Odes of Solomon are older than the NT writings and a crucial influence on, or source for, the NT. A third possibility is that both are records of the same sitz im leben.
Davies may be suggesting that those translations misleadingly play with the words to make them fit NT phrases. He sees Jesus as more of a Shaman than Judean sage, so I think he wants to distance his shaman Jesus from any sort of NT conception of Jesus.
Davies' objection is not about eisegetical or tendentious translations, although he does blow that whistle on Charlesworth. The point against Lattke is just that, with his vast erudition and 12 pound commentary, he provides no actual evidence that the Odes originate from the post-100 Christian era, when NT gospels and texts are already in circulation. For all that anyone knows, the Odes could be as old as the year 0 or earlier (if so, they would be the earliest "gnostic" texts we have).

Also, Davies is agnostic about a historical Jesus, i.e., regarding the role of such a figure in the origins of Christianity.
Personally I did see allusions to Christ theology in them but there is definitely unwillingness to directly mention Jesus' name.
The Christ theology of the Odes is obvious and not in dispute. To say that "there is definitely unwillingness to directly mention Jesus' name" is fine, but then you seem to be assuming the very point in question: whether or not there is a Jesus behind the Odes at all.
After the Judean War of 66-74 CE, with the destruction of the temple which had served as the "capital" of this kingdom on earth, and the attempts by all sides to effect ethnic cleansing, gentiles of the Jesus movement came to reject this Judean POV and reasoned that Jesus' anointing was of a spiritual kind aimed at individual relationships with a decidedly kind and non-judgmental God. Now that seems to be what the Odes are all about.
Attributing the Odes to "gentiles of the Jesus movement" does not explain why the Odes are so markedly Jewish in their piety, as Charlesworth, Lattke, Davies and other scholars all agree.
I'm thinking that the reluctance to mention Jesus' name may relate to the compiler/author/redactor's wish to distance his christ spirit with Judean messianism of the Bar Kosiba rebellion, so perhaps a mid to late 2nd century CE date of production?
I don't see how specifically omitting the earthly name (a common Jewish name) of the messiah who has already died would serve to dissociate the community of the Odes from the Judean messianism of the Bar Kochba rebellion. Wouldn't the Christ language itself be the problem?
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Re: The Christ Odes

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Ben C. Smith wrote: Thu May 30, 2019 6:23 pm I think it was Andrew Criddle, on this very forum, who suggested a reason for the omission of the name Jesus, even if the author(s) happened to know about Jesus Christ: if the fiction is that the Odes are songs composed by Solomon, then Solomon may well be imagined as writing about the Messiah (= Christ) without actually giving him a proper name (= Jesus), just as the Hebrew scriptures speak of a Messiah without giving him a proper name (with perhaps a couple of exceptions, including Emmanuel).

Lattke (pp. 5-6):

"We do not know whether the Odes of Solomon are the work of a single person. Their unity, which has been almost universally accepted since 1914, at least suggests that the poems originated in one religious community. The title "Odes" may have been added only after the collection was complete, even, perhaps, not until it was necessary to distinguish it in a compendium of the pseudo-Solomonic Psalms and Odes. That they were written using the pseudonym "Solomon" is hardly likely.

...All the early testimonies to and quotations of the Odes ascribe them...[to Solomon]. The pseudepigraphic name Solomon was the main and perhaps the only reason why the Odes were not assigned to the "antilegomena" or apocrypha of the New Testament.

"...why were they attributed to the king and poet Solomon--and that no later than the end of the second century...? It seems simplistic to rely completely on the statement in LXX 3 Kingdoms 5:12 [καὶ ἐλάλησε Σαλωμὼν τρισχιλίας παραβολάς, καὶ ἦσαν ᾠδαὶ αὐτοῦ πεντακισχίλιαι, "and Solomon spoke three thousand proverbs, and his odes were five thousand"]. So conceptual reasons have also been adduced to explain the pseudonym.

"Some years ago the question 'How old is the allegory that Christ is the true Solomon?' was proposed as a research topic...If this allegorical comparison were as old as the title Odes of Solomon, then the title might be intended christologically. In other words, they would actually be the "Odes of Christ." ...Up to now, however, there is unfortunately no evidence that the allegory can be traced back to the second century [Athanasius is the earliest]. So this problem of antique pseudepigraphy remains open and unresolved, like so many comparable ones."

Since the Odist(s) do not self-identify as Solomon, the theory that Ben attributes to Andrew seems unfounded. In other words, since the fiction of Solomonic authorship is most likely editorial, it could not have entered into the Odist(s)' reasons for withholding the name "Jesus."
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