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A review by thewrittenword
The Jewish Quarterly Review - October, 1898 - The Testament of Solomon by
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
4.0
A haunting and fascinating tale of power and the supernatural, The Testament of Solomon taps into the ancient fears and myths of man's dark and mysterious world and the authority of the creator towering above it. The story goes that during the building of the temple of Jerusalem by Solomon the king of the Jews one of the workers who happened to be in his favor was harassed by a demon. Noticing the young man's plight Solomon asked help from God and received a ring from the archangel Michael which will enabled him to command demons to do his bidding. Thus is set the intriguing and compelling story of how a man with the blessing of God summoned the fiends of the underworld and forced them to reveal themselves and to follow his orders in the creation of a monument to the master who they hated and feared.
The fascinating interaction between Solomon and the demons sets a dark and quite unsettling mood. The imaginable hideousness and grotesequeness of the cursed entities and their vile natures and practices which they boldly and shamelessly state depict the horrid and detestable core of evil on the printed page. Solomon's dominion over them contrasts like a healing shaft of light which illuminates these shadowy encounters in the reminder of God's absolute control of and over evil and everything.
What's speculative about this work is how much is fact. The tone from the start is that of fiction with its clichéd scenes and the references from its time in relation to medicine, geography and religion among others prove there's nothing out of the ordinary in the creation of the text. But anyone attuned to the supernatural and the dark, sinister side of this world will immediately sense the underlying truth in the portrayal of the malevolent reality of existence.
One of the gripping and darker tomes from the religiously fertile and turbulent era of Palestine during the early 1st millennium AD, this mysterious text written in Greek and a hybrid of Jewish, Greek and Christian beliefs is one of the more readable and relevant of the non-biblical writings. A riveting and disturbing portrayal of a world depicting the challenges of man and a reminder of the One who alone can save and is the Supreme ruler of all.
The fascinating interaction between Solomon and the demons sets a dark and quite unsettling mood. The imaginable hideousness and grotesequeness of the cursed entities and their vile natures and practices which they boldly and shamelessly state depict the horrid and detestable core of evil on the printed page. Solomon's dominion over them contrasts like a healing shaft of light which illuminates these shadowy encounters in the reminder of God's absolute control of and over evil and everything.
What's speculative about this work is how much is fact. The tone from the start is that of fiction with its clichéd scenes and the references from its time in relation to medicine, geography and religion among others prove there's nothing out of the ordinary in the creation of the text. But anyone attuned to the supernatural and the dark, sinister side of this world will immediately sense the underlying truth in the portrayal of the malevolent reality of existence.
One of the gripping and darker tomes from the religiously fertile and turbulent era of Palestine during the early 1st millennium AD, this mysterious text written in Greek and a hybrid of Jewish, Greek and Christian beliefs is one of the more readable and relevant of the non-biblical writings. A riveting and disturbing portrayal of a world depicting the challenges of man and a reminder of the One who alone can save and is the Supreme ruler of all.