Solomon as a True Exorcist:

The testament of Solomon in its cultural setting1

Peter Busch

When dealing with the testament of Solomon (T.Sol.), the poison cabinet
of Solomon traditions is wide open.2 What you can expect, is the descent
to the darkest powers of our Jewish-Christian abyssos, the encounter with
demons—male or female—, fear, torture and, at last, exorcisms over and
over again.
The outline is quickly told: While the temple is being constructed,
King Solomon notices a young worker who receives special payment and
additional food due to his exceptional commitment. Despite this special
treatment, the boy loses a lot of weight. This prompts the king to further
investigation, which reveals most unusual events. At night, the young
worker is visited by a demon called Ornias, who sucks the boy’s thumb
and takes away a large amount of his sustenance. This is the reason why
the boy has lost so much weight. The king seeks help, turning to God in
prayer, who sends him a ring via the Archangel Michael. This ring, which
contains a seal curved in a precious stone, has the power to bind all that
is of some demoniac nature. The boy receives the ring, together with the
precise instructions by king Solomon, and pushes it against the breast of
the unsuspecting demon Ornias, exclaiming “A vaunt: it is Solomon who
summons you” thus having him bend to his will and dragging him to Solo-
mon’s throne, who then questions him with insistence and orders him to
bring him the Lord of all the demons. Ornias obeys and brings Beelzebul
to the throne of Solomon. Sealed with the ring, Solomon questions him
insistently in spite of his most arrogant behavior, and haves him present
all the other unclean evil spirits.
So far for the story as described in the first three chapters of the tes-
tament of Solomon. The following chapters 4–25 are about Solomon

1 I am grateful to Wolfgang Loeffler, Lingenfeld, for his detailed philological suggestions.
2 Critical Edition by McCown 1922. After the English translation (with commentary)
by Duling 1983, 935–988, the T.Sol. was discussed only by a small contingent of scholars
in the last decade. The most notable publications are by are Johnston 2002; Klutz 2003;
Klutz 2005; Busch 2006a.
184 peter busch

questioning the demons one by one. Without exception, the question-

ing is subdivided into sequences, clearly recognizable as a fixed pattern,
although not kept up entirely consistent as a stereotype. Solomon seals
the demon, asks for his name and his doings, then for his astrological
constellation (“In which sign of the zodiac do you live?”), and finally for
the name of the angel who is able to thwart the demon’s power. At the
end, the demon is appointed for certain works on the temple, such as
spinning hemp, sawing marble stone, or lifting heavy stones and passing
them on to the workers.
Chapter by chapter, demon by demon, the reader of the T.Sol. learns
about an exquisite selection of harming spirits, e.g.: the donkey-legged
Onoskelis, who seduces and suffocates men. Asmodeus, the woman-
izer. Lix Tetrax, who has the shape of a cochlea and sows discord among
people, the seven stoicheiai as cosmocrators of the darkness, the thirty-six
heavenly bodies (the “decanes”), and many more.

The “First Reader” Reads the Text

The gentle reader of my last couple of sentences has certainly noticed that
I switched the narrative perspective: away from the omniscient narrator’s
overview down to the special viewpoint of the implied reader. Exactly this
perspective, however, seems to be the most challenging approach to this
obscure opus. According to several text-linguistic theories of the last thirty
years, one can call it the reconstruction of the “cultural lexicon” of the Testa-
ment’s first readers.
So, let us ask for the main topic in the testament of Solomon, the
demons and the way they can be thwarted. In what way is it linked to the
First Reader’s “cultural lexicon”? To come to the point right away: Demons
are a weighty topic in the religious sign-system of early Christianity.
At first, the New Testament’s sections that were read at the divine ser-
vice are full of exorcisms—recall the appropriate pericopes of the gospels.
Jesus, who casts out the demons just by his finger (Lk 11,20) or by his pow-
erful word; the apostles, in particular Paul and Peter dealing with demons
as successors of the Lord (Acts 5,12–16). Exorcisms are without any doubt
part of the “first reader’s” religious sign-system.
Secondly, an educated Christian was aware of the fact, that demons were
a common topic of philosophical discussions: At this point the demonolo-
gies of the Middle Platonists are to be mentioned, which develop parallel
to the generation of the New Testament documents: Plutarch, De defectu