The Odes and Psalms of Solomon

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

THE first edition of this book having been exhausted sooner than I had anticipated, I have decided not to delay the production of a new edition, which should, as far as possible, remove the errors of the former, and incorporate the results of the searching criticism to which the Odes and the manner of their presentation have been subjected.

In response to a number of appeals, I have added a facsimile A photographic reproduction or exact copy of the original handwritten text. of the unique manuscript from which I have worked. Then, as far as conviction ruled, I have accepted a number of textual betterments from scholars in England, France and Germany. In the case of the Psalms of Solomon A group of eighteen Jewish psalms written in the first century BCE, distinct from the Odes., I have added the readings of the curious fragment of these Psalms, preserved in a manuscript in the Cambridge University Library, to which Dr. Barnes has drawn attention. In the case of the Odes, the text and the translation and the theories connected therewith have been compared with those of Harnack-Flemming, Zahn, Ungnad-Stärk, Batiffol-Labourt, Barnes, Bernard, Diettrich, Charles, Clemen, Gunkel, Haussleiter, Mead, Menzies, Nestle, Schulthess, Spitta and others. As the range of interpretation is very wide, and critical consent still seems to be somewhat remote, I have added a new section to review the work done on the Odes by the scholars referred to, and to give some estimate of its value in the most important cases. With these corrections and expansions I hope the second edition will be as welcome as and not less useful than the first.

SELLY OAK
February 1911