Book Review: KLUTZ, TODD E. Rewriting the Testament of Solomon: Tradition, Conflict and Identity in a Late Antique Pseudepigraphon. London: T&T Clark, 2005. Cloth. Pp. 176. USD 130.00. ISBN 0567043924. Paper. Pp. 192. USD 55.00. ISBN 0567081877
Abstract
Sarah L.Schwarz Haverford College To most modern readers, the Testament of Solomon is a tale approached from the vantage of one of two translations: D. Duling's version, which appeared in the rst volume of J.H. Charlesworth's Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, or M. Whittaker's, from H.F.D. Sparks' Apocryphal Old Testament. They tell the story of King Solo- mon's construction of the Temple in Jerusalem aided by a panoply of demonic assis- tants, each of whom engages in conversations with the king before being bound into laboring on the construction project. At the end of the tale, Solomon succumbs to idolatry, agreeing to sacri ce locusts out of love for a foreign woman. While these translations and their brief introductions provide an essential route of entrée into this engaging body of material, they ironically can tend to obscure some of the most interesting issues, including the text's transmission, identity, and origins. These are the issues that Todd E. Klutz takes up in this book. The contemporary scholarly study of the Testament of Solomon began with F.F. Fleck's 1837 publication of a single sixteenth-century Greek copy of the text from a manuscript now in the Bibliothèque nationale de France (a.f. gr. 38).