Psalmist of the New Testament
By Doug Talley

One of the great joys derived from poetry is the sheer delight of discovery. There are so many wonderful and interesting poets in the world no one volume could ever possibly anthologize them all. I suspect not even a hundred volumes would suffice, because new poets, both ancient and modern, are constantly being discovered. 

Recently, I was enthused to chance upon the work of an anonymous poet whom I can only categorize as “major.” Such a label only has utility, I suppose, to distinguish a poet as among the very best that time has ever offered.  I believe the poet who composed the Odes of Solomon qualifies for that elite circle.

For centuries the Odes were only known by a few vague references found in writings of St. Ignatius of Antioch and a single quotation from Lactantius.  In 1785, the British Museum acquired a manuscript of the Pistis Sophia containing portions from five of the Odes. The Pistis Sophia is itself a Gnostic work written in Coptic, dating from the latter part of the third century in which the Odes were esteemed as canonical scripture. 

In 1909, a British scholar at Clare College in Cambridge by the name of J. Rendel Harris made the stunning discovery that lying among a heap of various Syriac papers on his bookshelf for almost two years was a manuscript with passages from the Odes identical to those quoted by Lactantius and the Pistis Sophia. Upon further examination he realized the manuscript contained forty-two odes, all of which appeared to be entirely intact but for the second and third. 

When Harris published the first English translation of the Odes in 1909, great controversy ensued regarding their origin, dating and authorship. Harris himself stated: “There does not seem to be anything about which everyone seems agreed unless it be that the Odes are of singular beauty and high spiritual value.” 

Shortly after the publication of Harris’ translation, the scholar F. C. Burkitt discovered another manuscript of the Odes in the British Museum Library, which had been brought there in 1843 from the library of the St. Surian Monastery (west of Cairo). The manuscript remained unnoticed for almost seventy years, when Burkitt found it and published it in 1912 in the Journal of Theological Studies. This manuscript also was incomplete and contained Odes 17 through 42. 

Of the 42 Odes, a total of forty are extant in Syriac, five in Coptic and one in Greek.  One of the foremost authorities on the Odes, James Charlesworth, has referred to them as the oldest Christian hymnbook. While debate continues, many authorities believe the Odes derive from a Christian sensibility and date from approximately 75 to 125 A.D. 

They are clearly modeled on the Davidic Psalms, incorporating fresh, vigorous imagery and traditional patterns of repetition, but unlike the earlier Psalms, the Odes contain very little of the plaintive supplication and vengeful attitude toward enemies encountered in the Psalms. Rather, they are gentle and restful and consistently joyous. Some have noted a similarity in tone and theme between the Odes and the Gospel of John, perhaps best illustrated in lines from the third Ode, “because I love Him that is the Son, I shall become a son,” echoing the passage from John 1:12 ― “to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.” 

Very little information can be gleaned from the Odes about their author. In the twentieth Ode the poet affirmatively states: “I am a priest of the Lord, and to Him I do priestly service.” We can, therefore, safely conclude that the poet is a man and one with some measure of authority either in a Judaic or Christian community. 

But beyond this statement, the Odes are utterly lacking in historical allusion, and the reference in their title to Solomon is most certainly not authentic. A literary convention common to most works of the Pseudepigrapha, the composer of the Odes attributed his poems to Solomon in order to vest them with greater weight and authority.

Why Solomon as opposed to some other patriarch or prophet? Some have conjectured that because the word “Shalom,” from which the name Solomon derives, means “peace” or “rest” that the title could also be translated “Odes of Peace.” This would be appropriate given the gentle, restful tone of the Odes. In my opinion the name Solomon is a fitting attribution because he was the son of David, and not only are the Odes a kind of literary descendant of the Davidic Psalms, they are also rife with allusions to, and statements made by, the Messiah ― traditionally considered also a son of David. While the title literally translates as the Odes of Solomon, in theme and spirit they are indeed Odes of the Son of David. 

A number of translations of the Odes have been made into English, starting with the Harris translation found in the The Lost Books of the Bible and the Forgotten Books of Eden published by World Bible Publishers, Inc. That translation, as well as a number of others, is now well established in the public domain through the Internet. Interested readers can review translations found at the following websites:

www.misericordia.edu/users/davies/thomas/odes.htm (James Charlesworth translation)

www.goodnewsinc.net/othbooks/odesolmn.html (J. Rendel Harris translation)

www.atmajyoti.org/ch_odes_solomon_TEXT.asp (Simeon Goldstein translation)

I prefer the Harris translation and will offer several samples from that collection to illustrate what I consider to be the singular genius of the poet of the Odes ― the ability to use simple, striking images to convey profound spiritual truths. Consider the following:

Ode 1 (in its entirety)

Ode 6:

Ode 11:

Ode 16

Ode 27 (in its entirety)

Ode 28

Ode 34

Ode 39 (a possible allusion to Christ walking on the sea)

Ode 40 (in its entirety)

These lines reflect a highly developed spiritual nature, one who, like the apostle Paul, was utterly transformed by light and thereafter learned through obedience and diligence how to rest content in any storm.  We are entirely persuaded he has found all joy, and his heart and tongue accordingly cannot be restrained. 

The tone of the Odes is one of high exaltation, in flavor like the Davidic Psalms, but I find the poetic technique in some of them even more compelling than that found in the Psalms. There is unrivaled genius in the compression and vividness of the line ― My heart was cloven and its flower appeared. It is an image particularly appealing to a modern taste cultivated these last few decades by surrealism, but the image does not merely fly off into the realm of the fantastic and incomprehensible.  Instead, with classical precision and restraint the poet weaves that image into the metaphysical experience of spiritual awakening ― For the Most High clave my heart by His Holy Spirit and searched my affection towards Him… and His opening of me became my salvation. If the Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges is correct in suggesting that perhaps “universal history is the history of a few metaphors,” our history has just been vastly enlarged by the modern discovery of this ancient flower of the heart. 

Debate will no doubt continue over the identity of the poet of the Odes, and whether he was Jewish or Christian, but I, for one, feel no grip of conscience in allowing my own bias. It pleases me to think of this poet as an early Christian, one of the first singers of the Gospel. I had not thought that the Psalmist of the Old Testament could ever know an equal, but to my way of thinking it is only fitting that his equal should be a Psalmist of the New Testament, singing a new doctrine, that of the resurrection as found in

Ode 22:

The song of salvation is the greatest of all themes in our all too mortal world, and I believe it a providential blessing of the highest order in this cynical age to have revealed to us the joyful, unrestrained voice of a first generation witness to life after death. Who would not sing for joy upon such a discovery? The poet of the Odes persuades us even the very stones cried out.