Chronology of the Kings of Israel and Judah – Part 93
Like his father David, Solomon is one of most famous characters in the Hebrew Bible:
But did he actually exist? That is what we will be investigating in this article.
Solomon’s story is told primarily in II Samuel, I Kings, II Kings, I Chronicles and II Chronicles. He is also mentioned in several other books of the Old Testament: Ezra, Nehemiah, Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Songs and Jeremiah.
Like his father Solomon is said to have reigned over Israel for forty years. He was born in Jerusalem to David and Bathsheba. When his father died he succeeded him, even though he had at least six older half-brothers. One of these, Adonijah, had been David’s heir apparent and had seized the throne shortly before David’s death. But he yielded the crown to Solomon when David nominated the latter to be his successor.
Solomon’s reign is described as a golden age in the history of Israel. Trade flourished with neighbouring Phoenician cities such as Tyre, and expeditions were sent out to mysterious far-off places such as Tarshish and Ophir―wherever they were. A fleet of ships was constructed at Ezion-Geber, on the Gulf of Aqaba. Many major construction projects were carried out at great expense. The most famous of these was the First Temple―the Temple of Solomon. Other works attributed to him included the Palace of Solomon, the Millo (a defensive structure around Jerusalem), the walls of Jerusalem and the rebuilding of a number of cities that had been destroyed during or after the Joshuan Conquest of Canaan, such as Hazor, Megiddo, Gezer, Beth-Horon, Baalath and Tadmor.
Later in his reign Solomon took many foreign women as wives, built temples to their gods and abandoned the worship of Yahweh. One of his officials, Jeroboam of the Tribe of Ephraim, rebelled against him. When Solomon tried to have him killed, he fled to Egypt, where Pharaoh Shishak granted him asylum.
And the rest of the acts of Solomon, and all that he did, and his wisdom, are they not written in the book of the acts of Solomon? And the time that Solomon reigned in Jerusalem over all Israel was forty years. And Solomon slept with his fathers, and was buried in the city of David his father: and Rehoboam his son reigned in his stead. (I Kings 11:41–43)
This is what the Bible tells us about Solomon and his reign. But there is actual little evidence on the ground to confirm any of this. No contemporary mention of Solomon has ever been found outside Biblical sources:
Neither the name Solomon nor allusion to his reign has yet been found in any contemporary extrabiblical source. Therefore, we have to rely solely on the pertinent biblical sources for reconstruction of the period of Solomon. ―Freedman 8312
Archaeological evidence is also wanting:
For centuries, Bible readers all over the world have looked back to the era of David and Solomon as a golden age in Israel’s history. Until recently many scholars have agreed that the united monarchy was the first biblical period that could truly be considered historical. Unlike the hazy memories of the patriarchs’ wanderings, or the miraculous Exodus from Egypt, or the bloody visions of the books of Joshua and Judges, the story of David was a highly realistic saga of political maneuvering and dynastic intrigue. Even though many details of David’s early exploits are certainly legendary elaborations, scholars long believed that the story of his rise to power meshed well with the archaeological reality. The initial, dispersed settlement of the Israelites in their hill country villages slowly coalesced into more centralized forms of organization. And the threat posed to the Israelites by the coastal Philistine cities would have provided the crisis that precipitated the rise of the Israelite monarchy. Indeed, archaeologists have identified clear levels of destruction of former Philistine and Canaanite cities that they believed marked the path of David’s wide-ranging conquests. And the impressive city gates and palaces uncovered at several important sites in Israel were seen as evidence of Solomon’s building activities.
Yet many of the archaeological props that once bolstered the historical basis of the David and Solomon narratives have recently been called into question. The actual extent of the Davidic “empire”, is hotly debated. Digging in Jerusalem has failed to produce evidence that it was a great city in David or Solomon’s time. And the monuments ascribed to Solomon are now most plausibly connected with other kings. Thus a reconsideration of the evidence has enormous implications. For if there were no patriarchs, no Exodus, no conquest of Canaan―and no prosperous united monarchy under David and Solomon―can we say that early biblical Israel, as described in the Five Books of Moses and the books of Joshua, Judges, and Samuel, ever existed at all? ―Finkelstein & Silberman 124–125
According to I Kings 1, David’s fourth-born son Adonijah proclaimed himself King of Israel during his father final illness, but he subsequently ceded the throne to his younger half-brother Solomon, who was David and Bathsheba’s second-born son. Of Adonijah’s three elder brothers, Amnon and Absalom had predeceased him. The middle brother Chileab, however, is never mentioned after II Samuel 3:3, which simply records his birth.
If we ultimately reject the historicity of Solomon, where does that leave this account of Adonijah? Might his story be a relic of a genuine tradition of an early Israelite or Canaanite ruler of Jerusalem called Adonijah? Like Saul’s son Eshbaal (Ish-Bosheth), he is one of the forgotten Kings of Israel, who are rarely mentioned or even acknowledged.
In our discussion of Solomon’s father David we quoted Gunnar Heinsohn’s opinion on these two figures. In Die Sumerer gab es nicht [The Sumerians Did Not Exist] Heinsohn rejected the historicity of both David and Solomon. He suggested that they were originally solar deities:
If one wanted to turn to the question of the Israelite conquest of Canaan, which was so difficult or impossible to answer up to now, it is taking place at the time when the historiographical reliability of biblical traditions is also increasing--that is, at the beginning of the so-called divided kingdom after about ~ -930. The legends about the so-called kings of the empire, David and Solomon, may prove to be amalgamations of local princes with anthropomorphized astral heroes, as well as historical material about the Assyrian kings Tiglath-Pileser III (Solomon) and Shalmaneser III (David), which later Bible compilers nostrified on ancient Hebrew history. The achievements of later Hebrew kings such as Azariah/Ussia also seem to have been attributed to Solomon. It has long been undisputed that the terminology used to describe the territorial expansion of that great empire of David and Solomon dates back to the Persian period, i.e. the late -6. and the -5. Belongs to the 19th century, yes directly takes over the scope of the Persian satrapy of the Transeuphrates. There are still differences as to whether an empire existed 500 years earlier and was maintained in a manner and memory that is no longer comprehensible, or whether the terminology and the thing described in it belong together to the late period. ―Heinsohn 250–251
Solomon’s greatest achievement was the building of the First Temple in Jerusalem. This structure is known universally as the Temple of Solomon.
But temples are generally named after the gods who are worshipped in them, not the men who build them. Hence we have temples of Zeus, Apollo, Diana, Baal, Dagon, etc. It stands to reason that the Temple of Solomon was originally a temple in which a pagan god was worshipped. And it is not difficult to work out who that god was. As we learned in the last article in this series, Jerusalem is named after a pagan god: Shalem or Shalim. Solomon is merely a euhemerization of Shalem.
Traditionally, Solomon’s name is said to mean peaceful, but it is generally acknowledged that it comes from the same Semitic root as Shalem. It is also interesting that a Salmon is numbered among David’s ancestors. In Ruth 4:20, Salmon is spelled שַׂלְמָֽה׃ [śal-māh], which differs from the spelling of Solomon’s Hebrew name only in the points (Strong 117).
I believe that the Temple of Shalem in Jerusalem was an oracle of international repute in Canaanite times. Rulers would visit this oracle from far and wide in search of wisdom. This is the origin of the tradition that Solomon was the wisest of men.
One of the rulers who came to consult this oracle was Hatshepsut, Queen of Thebes. As a woman in a male-dominated world she required divine advice on how best to govern Egypt. In the Bible she is called the Queen of Sheba, the latter being a Hebrew transcription of the Egyptian name of this city:
The capital of Egypt during the 18th Dynasty was the mighty city of Thebes. Modern Egyptologists still use this name, which is derived from the Greeks. Where the Greeks got it has always been a mystery, since the native name of the metropolis, in the hieroglyphs, is read as Wa.se or Wa.she ... Twelve years ago Lisa Liel of Israel, an authority on both hieroglyphic and cuneiform scripts, pointed out to me that in her opinion the word should be read as Se.wa or She.wa, since the spellings of hieroglyphic names vary and in addition are often written not precisely as they should be pronounced ... Now, if Thebes’ Egyptian name is really Shewa (Sheba) then a whole host of hitherto mysterious facts become comprehensible. First and foremost, we now know where the Greeks got the word Thebes (Theba). A normal linguistic mutation (lisping) turns “s” or “sh” into “th.” Thus for example the Persians called Assyria, Athuria. Secondly, we know why Josephus called the capital of Ethiopia (i.e. Upper Egypt/Nubia) by the name Saba or Shaba. Finally, we understand the significance of the name of another cult shrine of the god Amon―the oasis of Siwa. ―Sweeney 3:31–32
In I Kings 10 we read the following enigmatic passage:
10 And when the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the Lord, she came to prove him with hard questions. And she came to Jerusalem with a very great train, with camels that bare spices, and very much gold, and precious stones: and when she was come to Solomon, she communed with him of all that was in her heart. And Solomon told her all her questions: there was not any thing hid from the king, which he told her not. ―I Kings 10:1–3
Commentators have puzzled over this passage and the Bible’s use of the expression חידות [ḥiddot], riddles. But what clearer account could we have of a foreign ruler consulting an oracle? Hatshepsut questioned the oracle, received wise answers, and returned to Egypt, where she enjoyed a very successful reign.
In I Kings 11 we are told that Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines, drawn from half a dozen neighboring countries. Many of these women were pagans and Solomon’s built temples in Jerusalem to these foreign gods, as Milton recalls in Book I of Paradise Lost:
... With these in troop
Came Astoreth, whom the Phoenicians called
Astarte, queen of heaven, with crescent horns;
To whose bright image nightly by the moon
Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs;
In Sion also not unsung, where stood
Her temple on th' offensive mountain, built
By that uxorious king whose heart, though large,
Beguiled by fair idolatresses, fell
To idols foul.―Milton, Paradise Lost 437–446
In the Roman Catholic Church nuns are called Brides of Christ. Did the tradition of Solomon’s legendary uxoriousness arise from a similar practice of referring to pagan priestesses in Jerusalem Brides of Shalem? In later times the Jewish priesthood was an exclusively male preserve, but we know that earlier Canaanite cults featured priestesses. See Halima Sha’s thesis The Role and Status of Women during the pre-Monarchic Period for further discussion.
The Bible’s condemnation of the elderly Solomon as an idolater may also reflect the fact that Shalem was a pagan god.
Another characteristic Solomon shares with pagan deities is the fact that he had several names or epithets (Singer 438):
In rabbinical tradition his realm comprised the whole of the terrestrial globe, as well as the upper world inhabited by the angels (Singer 439). Solomon used to sail through these realms on a throne of light. (Singer 440). This is hardly the kingdom of a man.
Solomon was the pagan god Shalem, from whom Jerusalem took its name. There was no historical King Solomon.
And that’s a good place to stop.
