The Testament of Solomon: Retrospect and Prospect

In the seventeenth century a few European scholars began to take mote of the ’Colbert* manuscript. an unusual Greek ~o~ composition of twenty-four paper fc~bos which made its way from private library collections in France to what is now the Biliotheque Nationale.2 Titled ’Testament of Solomon’ (&ta&euro;h~ L>ÀOJ.10V’C0<;; cf TSol 15.14; 2&7-8), and given the MS designation ’P’ in C.C. McCown’s later CHtical edition,3 the author of the Testament (= TSol) claimed to relate Solomon’s own account of how he built the Jerusalem temple with the aid of the demons. In the process, the document reveals a fascinating array of magic, primitive medicine, astrology, angelology, and demonology. Scholars in the past have usually ignored the Testament of Solomon. Some may have considered it too exotic to be of