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The Gnostic and Magical Solomon

Introduction

How did King Solomon wind up in later Christian traditions? The Revelation of Adam—a second-century book from Nag Hammadi—claims that the great Seth became incarnate in a human being who was born of a virgin. He sounds a lot like Jesus! According to the text, King Solomon had sent his army of demons to find another virgin, but the virgin whom the demons brought to him gave birth to a child who grew up in the desert and received glory.

These Solomonic themes—the king’s command of demons, his relationships with women, and his role in the savior’s advent—persist together and/or separately in a range of works that draw upon or are close to so-called gnostic literature. These include On the Origin of the World, the Testimony of Truth, and the Second Treatise of the Great Seth from the Nag Hammadi codices and the Final Quittance of the Hermetic alchemist Zosimus of Panopolis. Solomon’s control of demons and promiscuity with women were troubling. But, strangely, his power could also be harnessed in the effort to oppose the evil forces of this cosmos.

Professor David Brakke is the Joe R. Engle Chair in the History of Christianity and Professor of History at the The Ohio State University. He studies and teaches the history and literature of ancient Christianity, with special interests in asceticism, monasticism, “Gnosticism,” biblical interpretation, and Egyptian Christianity. Brakke is currently serving as President of NAPS (North American Patristics Society), and he has served on the Board of Consultants of the Journal of Religion. Brakke has produced three courses with “The Great Courses” (aka Wondrium), including one on “Gnosticism” and another on early Christian apocrypha. He also maintains a page on Academia.edu that includes access or reference to his other books and articles.

Here is the pdf file that Dr. Brakke mentions in the recording.

Texts

The Revelation of Adam 77.16–28; 78.27–79.19; 82.4–10, 19–25 (trans. Layton/Brakke 2021)

[Adam speaking to Seth:]

Next, they [the lower powers] will chastise the flesh of the human being upon whom the holy spirit has come.

Next, all the powers’ angels and races will make use of the name deceitfully, saying, “Whence did it (the flesh) come into existence?” Or else, “Whence came the utterances of falsehood that all the powers have failed to make out?”

Now the first kingdom [says of him],

…

[The fourth] kingdom [says of him],

“He came into existence [from a] virgin (? ) [. . . search] for her himself, along with Phērsalō and Sauēl and his armies that they had sent.

Solomōn, too, sent his army of demons a to search for the female virgin

And they found not the female for whom they sought, but rather the female virgin who had been given to them:

It was she whom they brought.

Solomōn took her, and the female virgin became pregnant and bore the child in that place.

She nourished him within a boundary of the desert.

When he had been nourished, he received glory and power from the seed from which he had been engendered.

And it was thus that he arrived at the water.”

…

The twelfth kingdom says of him,

“He came into existence from two luminaries,

And they nourished him there.

He received glory and power.

And it was thus that he arrived at the water.”

…

But the undominated race says,

“God chose him from all the aeons,

And caused acquaintance (gnōsis) with the incorruptible quality of truth to reside [in] him.”

The Second Discourse of the Great Seth 63.11–17 (trans. Meyer 2007, alt.)

[Christ speaking to “the perfect and undefiled”:]

Solomon was a joke, since he became arrogant through the ruler of the seventh realm and thought he was the Christ, as though he had become stronger than I and my siblings. We are blameless toward him; I have not sinned.

The Testimony of Truth 70.1–30 (trans. Reaves 2019)

Others have demons dwelling with them, like King David. He is the one who established the foundation of Jerusalem. And his son, Solomon, whom he produced in adultery, is the one who built Jerusalem through the aid of the demons, because he received power. When he had completed building, he imprisoned the demons in the temple. He placed them into seven water jugs. They remained abandoned in the water jugs for a long time. When the Romans went up to Jerusalem, they opened the water jugs, and immediately the demons fled from the water jugs like those who escape from prison. And the water jugs remained pure. And since those days, they dwell in people who are in ignorance, and have remained on earth.

Who, then is “David”? And who is “Solomon”? And what is the foundation? And what is the wall that surrounds Jerusalem? And who are the “demons”? And what are the “water jugs”? And who are the “Romans?” These [are mysteries …]

On the Origin of the World 106.27–107.3 (trans. Meyer 2007, alt.)

Because death was androgynous, he had sex with himself and produced seven androgynous children. These are the names of the males: envy, wrath, tears, sighs, grief, lament, tearful groans. These are the names of the females: anger, pain, lust, sighs, curses, bitterness, strife. They had sex with each other, and each one conceived seven children, so that the children total forty-nine androgynous demons.

You will find their names and functions in the Book of Solomon.

Transcript

Shirley Paulson

Hi everybody, welcome to the February 2026 Bible and Beyond Discussion. I’m so pleased to see you, and I’m really especially pleased to be able to introduce to you Dr. David Brakke, who has done a couple of Bible and Beyond podcast interviews with us before but hasn’t been with us in person before. So I’m very pleased that you get a chance to meet him tonight and to get a chance to talk with him. If you’ve heard David before, you’re familiar with the fact that he kind of pushes at the edges of things and gets us thinking. And I think that’s what we’re going to do again this evening.

His topic is “The Gnostic and Magical Solomon.” So before we get into that, let me tell you just a little bit more about David. He’s the Joe R. Engel Chair in the History of Christianity and Professor of History at Ohio State University. He teaches history and literature of ancient Christianity from its origins through the 5th century with special interest in asceticism, monasticism, Gnosticism, biblical interpretation, and Egyptian Christianity. In our previous podcast interviews, we discussed his book on the Gospel of Judas and what the early Jesus people were reading. He’s also produced a course called “Gnosticism” with The Great Courses.

We are so pleased to have you with us again this evening, David. Thanks for being with us.

David Brakke

I’m glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

Shirley

All right. So this King Solomon you’re talking about, this is the same one we know in the Bible. Is that right?

David

That’s right.

Shirley

But you have found him showing up in a very strange way in extracanonical writings. And I’ve always thought of these extracanonical writings from outside the Bible as giving us more insights into what’s happening with the things inside the Bible. And that’s the part I want to explore with you tonight.

So what we’re talking about now are some writings about Solomon some thousand years later, where Solomon kind of even resembles Jesus, which seems really strange to me. In order to get us all together on this one page with this, could you give us a brief reminder of who King Solomon was and what he was known for? Let’s start there.

David 

Yeah, sure. So the King Solomon story you will mostly find in the first 11 or 12 chapters of I Kings in the Old Testament was the second king of Israel, of course. And he was the son of King David by Bathsheba. You may remember that David had a kind of—“affair” isn’t the right word—but he ended up falling for this woman, Bathsheba. Solomon becomes king—there’s a kind of little bit of a power struggle with David’s death, but Solomon follows his father as king. And you may remember that he is responsible for building the temple in Jerusalem, the first temple that was later destroyed.

He is also famous for his wisdom. First Kings tells us about him praying to God for special wisdom and then tells stories that highlight Solomon’s wisdom. And then he’s also, however, also kind of famous for having many, many, many, many wives, often from different countries, whom the biblical authors often accuse him of being interested in their gods as well. And so that is not being so good. And, you know, there’s a famous visit along these lines to Jerusalem and to King Solomon by the Queen of Sheba. So these are kind of the highlights from the Bible that probably we’d be most familiar with.

Shirley

Yeah, so that leaves us with a very mixed feeling about him, that we love his wisdom, but we’re not so crazy about his women issues. He’s sort of hanging there for us. Now you can get us to the context of this new research here. Would you explain what these books are that were written after Jesus, even a thousand years after Solomon? We’re relatively familiar with the Nag Hammadi collection. So are these new things you’re showing us related to Nag Hammadi?

David

Most of the things I’ve been working on, well, at least four of them, I think, are Nag Hammadi texts. So they were originally written in Greek, probably second, third centuries, and then translated into Coptic and ended up in the Nag Hammadi collection. But I’ve also been looking at the so-called Hermetic literature. This is philosophers donated to Hermes Trismegistus, a kind of Egyptian / Greek god, writings by a guy named Zosimus of Panopolis. He’s Egyptian. This is from the 300s. A text that will come up in our discussion for sure is something called the Testament of Solomon, which is a rather lengthy text about Solomon and his relationship with demons and his building of the temple, whose date is something of some controversy among scholars. Anything from the second century to as late as the eighth, we’ll say. So there are a bunch of things. We also have books that are kind of semi-biblical. Like the Wisdom of Solomon, which is in Catholic Bibles—Catholic Old Testaments—not in Protestant, written maybe in the first century BC or the first century AD. So lots of stuff starting around zero going forward.

Shirley 

All right, so I want to tell everybody that the reason we’re doing this tonight is that I heard you speaking at the SBL—Society of Biblical Literature—meeting this past November in Boston. And I was really intrigued with what you were saying, which is why I thought it would be nice for you to come and talk with us tonight. So in that paper, you put most of your focus on the book called Revelation of Adam, a Nag Hammadi piece. And it’s one of those books that has these Solomon themes. So to get into that, it might be helpful for us to understand why Adam is having a revelation and who he’s talking to. I mean, we’re more accustomed to Adam eating a fruit of a tree in Genesis and then getting cursed. So then how does Seth fit in here? What’s going on with Seth and Solomon?

David

Right. Okay. So the person who’s really at the center here is Seth. The Revelation of Adam is a Gnostic text written by a group of Christians who identified themselves as Gnostics. And the central character that’s really important is, in fact, Seth, who is Adam and Eve’s third son. They had Cain and Abel. Cain killed Abel and then was cursed, and off he went. So then they had this son, Seth. And the Gnostics saw in Seth the kind of archetypal progenitor of their people. They saw him as a kind of biblical ancestor of their persons. And so the Revelation of Adam is what’s called a testament. We talked about the Testament of Solomon, in which Adam is at the end of his life, and he’s talking to his son, Seth. And what Adam has to tell him is, first of all, Adam retells the creation of him and Eve and what happened in the Garden of Eden, all very important Gnostic themes.

Of course, with the important thing being the god who made Adam and Eve and so on, is not the ultimate God, right? But a lower hostile god. And then what happens is that Adam says, “I had a divine revelation in which God appeared to me. And, you know, God appeared to me in a kind of three-person figure. And then Adam tells Seth everything that’s going to happen to Seth’s descendants and the Gnostics up until the arrival of the Gnostic savior. And so this is really a text that, yes, the revelation comes to Adam. But that revelation is transmitted to Seth, and it’s telling Seth what’s going to happen in the future. This includes the flood—Noah’s flood—stuff like this. Anyway, that’s what’s going on. And we think this text is from maybe the late 100s.

Shirley

So then, since this book, Revelation of Adam, isn’t very familiar to us. Can you sort of tell us more about what’s going on in the book, like just the book itself? Right. Okay, so what does Adam reveal to Seth? What he reveals to him, as I already said, is that the God who made him and Adam and Eve is not the ultimate god, but a lower hostile god.

The Gnostics often called him Saklas, or Yaldabaoth. But the main thing is to figure out he’s not the highest God. And this is the god of the Jewish Bible that they’re saying is a lower god. And there’s a higher God. And then the rest he tells to Seth is a kind of history of the descendants of Seth. And he tells how that god, the lower god, tries to hurt them by killing them in a flood and dousing them with fire and brimstone at Sodom and Gomorrah, but God keeps them safe. So it’s kind of a story of how the higher God is going to preserve the descendants of Seth and the Gnostics until the end of time. And it kind of climaxes in the arrival of a savior figure in whom the great luminary of Gnosis, the great luminary of knowledge, becomes incarnate. Adam tells Seth that this human being, who is the incarnate of the Savior, will perform signs and wonders, but his flesh will be chastised and he will suffer.

Shirley

It sounds like Jesus to me.

David

It sounds like Jesus, but he’s never called Jesus—which, if you think about it, makes sense because Adam is predicting something, and he is not necessarily going to say to Seth. “And his name is Jesus and he’s going to have parents, Mary and Joseph”. So what happens is that various so-called kingdoms, which are groups of people who live in the world, then offer poetic explanations for how the incarnation of the Savior happened and how the human being who incarnates the Savior—how he was born and so forth.

And there are these 13 kingdoms that provide 13 explanations for how the savior became incarnate. None of which are exactly right until the descendants of Seth offer their own explanation. And then Adam says, “The savior is going to come! He’s going to make knowledge of the true God available to everyone. And then the end of time is going to come. And the people, the gnostics will be saved and other people will be destroyed, and they’ll be unhappy,” and so forth. So this is what happens in the book. It kind of forecasts everything that’s going to happen and retells biblical stories from a kind of gnostic point of view, ending with the arrival of the Savior and then the coming salvation that’s going to arrive.

Shirley

Okay. Then I think we get the gist of where it’s going, but then how in the world do we get to Solomon? What’s he doing in the story about Adam and Seth?

David 

Okay, so as I told you, there are these 13 kingdoms who provide explanations or mythic stories of how the Savior came to be. And one of these is the fourth kingdom. And the fourth kingdom tells a story that involves Solomon, in which Solomon and his demons wished to find a certain virgin. They did not find that virgin, but instead somehow God gave them another virgin. Solomon then, as the text politely puts it, “took” that virgin and she became pregnant and gave birth to this child who then was nourished. And he became strong through the seed of Solomon, and he became the savior, the incarnation of the gnostic savior. So this suggests that the gnostic savior is, in fact, a descendant of Solomon, of his seed and of Solomon’s liaison with this virgin. Now, clearly, this is not the right answer, but it’s a possible answer, according to our gnostic authors.

Shirley

Let’s go back to the Bible a little bit. I know we’ve heard Solomon’s story in the Bible that you went over with us. And I am really rather appalled about his relationship with women and wealth and his means of power and all this. And yet we glorify his humility when he asked for God’s wisdom. Is he a good guy or a bad guy? What are we supposed to make of this? We need help with this.

David

Okay. So, you know, we can all talk about the biblical character himself. And I think like most of the kings of Israel, he’s presented in the Bible somewhat ambiguously, even like David. David is a flawed person. Saul, the first king is not so great either. And David gets rid of him, and David’s the second king, and then Solomon’s the third king. And so he is a flawed character, but one who carries out God’s will by building the temple and leading the people.

Of course, when he dies the kingdom splits in two, into Israel and Judah. So in the Bible itself, he’s already presented somewhat ambiguously as a kind of normal person, not perfect and kind of flawed. What happens in later tradition in the kinds of later texts is that his wisdom gets played up a great deal. And he is seen as the author of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes and this Wisdom of Solomon. And so his wisdom thing gets kind of held up very much. But there is this other side of him that also shows up in ancient Jewish and Christian literature that emphasizes his relationship with demons and his reputation for being something of a ladies’ man, as we would put it. And so he, in later literature, has an equally kind of ambiguous quality to him. But he’s a formidable person. That’s the important thing.

Shirley

All right, so then what is the revelation of Adam then that he’s saying about Solomon? Now that we sort of know who he is. What is the revelation?

David

In the end, what the revelation is saying is that there are certain people who would explain the arrival of a savior figure in terms of a descendant of Solomon who has the same kind of powers that Solomon had. That is, you know, the power over the demonic and the power of wisdom and all this stuff. But our gnostic author, aware of that possibility, rejects it. He says, no, he’s not coming from Solomon. He’s coming in some other way. But the revelation of Adam is presenting the idea that Solomon is the true origin of—if we want to call it this—the messiah, the savior, or whatever you want to call it. It’s wrong. But he’s aware of people who link the savior with Solomon. And especially Solomon’s power is probably over demons.

Shirley

Talk to us a little bit, then, about the demons and how they fit into all this. Why do we need the demons in the story?

David

Great question! If there’s anything Solomon becomes really important for in the first millennium, up to the year 1000, among Jews and Christians, is his power over demons! Where do they get this idea? Well, first of all, they get it from the fact that he was very wise. So he knew how to deal. He knew about the universe and how the universe works. And in the Wisdom of Solomon, which, again, was written, maybe the century before 0, or the century after, written in Greek, ended up in what’s called the Septuagint—which you know becomes the Old Testament of the church and the like.

According to the Wisdom of Solomon, one of the things that Solomon knows is the powers of the spirits. Because just as he knows why the seasons are and how the earth produces and so on, he knows what demons do. So this becomes something simply a very wise man would know. He would know how demons work and what they do and so forth. So there’s that side of it.

The other side of it is that there’s a strange verse in 1 Kings 6, which is talking about Solomon building the temple. And it reads like this. “The house was built with stone, finished at the quarry, so that neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron was heard in the temple while it was being built.” It’s a very kind of odd verse. I mean, I think what it’s supposed to be saying is that all the stones in the temple were completely fashioned at the quarry. And so when they were brought in, no more work had to be done on them. But it says essentially that no hammer or axe or tool of iron was heard while the temple was being built. So somehow the temple was built silently. And ancient readers began to think that, therefore, the temple must have had some non-human, supernatural, if you want to put it, activity. The workers who made it must have also have been miraculous. And so what kind of develops is this idea that Solomon was able to complete the building of this amazing temple silently and quickly and amazingly—because he was able to exert power over demons and get them to help him build the temple. So this is how all this kind of comes together. It’s both that the temple had some sort of miraculous building happening and Solomon was really, really wise and knew what was going on with demons. And that kind of gets combined into Solomon built the temple with the help of demons.

Shirley

Okay, now you need to help us understand the demons. I mean, I think that the demons sound like they’re just evil things floating around in the sky, but is there something good about them building a temple?

David

Well, if you have power over them. So the big text that kind of talks about this in great detail is this text that I’ve been referring to, called the “Testament of Solomon.” And many of the traditions that you see in Gnostic and hermetic works are also found in the Testament of Solomon. And originally scholars used to think the Testament of Solomon was the source for the ideas that you see in these other things. But now people aren’t so sure because they think the Testament of Solomon could be later than the Revelation of Adam and some of these other texts at Nag Hammadi. But in any event, the story of the Testament of Solomon, in brief, is that one of the workers, human workers working on the temple, is sick all the time and he’s having a hard time. And Solomon investigates this and realizes a demon must be behind this, because of course, demons can do all sorts of things—make you sick, and so forth. And the demons may have been trying to prevent the building of the temple. Solomon prays and he is given by the archangel Michael a very powerful ring that you wear on your finger, a ring that gives him the ability to command and have control over demons. And the rest of the Testament of Solomon is essentially Solomon calling in demons one by one, and we are given their names and he interrogates them about what their powers are. Remember, Wisdom of Solomon said he knew the powers of the spirits. And because he has this ring, they have to answer him,”My name, demonic name is this. And I have the power to make the winds blow.” You know, they all give these reports. And after he learns what each of them does, he tells them, “Well, then you have to help me with the temple now.” And off they go and do the temple. So it’s not that they’re particularly nice beings. It’s that they are under Solomon’s control, thanks to his magic ring, and they must do what he says. Now this means this is a great power to have  because demons are out there doing all sorts of not so great things. And so it would be great if you knew what Solomon knew and could draw on that power. And that’s a lot of what we see in this ancient literature.

Shirley

So with these demons here that are hanging around and Solomon has control over them, would you say they are the same demons that were bothering the king, just two kings before him, like King Saul, when he was in trouble with things bothering him, were they the same kinds of demons?

David

Sure. So, very likely the ancient people would have thought, Yeah, why did Saul essentially go a little nuts? And probaby because of demons. They are responsible for a lot of this stuff, yes.

Shirley

So the implication there would be that Solomon had greater power than Saul because Solomon could control the demons, but Saul couldn’t.

David

Right. But it must be said that interest in demons and in their names and their individual powers and so on is much more a post-biblical phenomenon. That is, the biblical authors are aware that there are demons out there, but they’re not nearly as interested in cataloging demons, listing them, seeing what they each specialize in, all this kind of esoteric knowledge about demons. This really becomes a thing, really starting in maybe like the second century AD. And it really just takes off. And so that kind of interest in making Solomon know this kind of detailed level of demons and what they’re doing—this is really a post-biblical phenomenon, even as it draws on the Bible for its picture of Solomon.

Shirley

Related to this concept of the demons who have power to do things, it feels like it’s related to the concepts we’ve been talking about in terms of just what magic used to mean. So a lot of people were using magic spells to control people. Do you see a connection between magic and demons here?

David

Oh, yeah, most definitely. So, you know, he has his magic ring, if you want to think about it that way, Solomon in the story. From antiquity, we have spells. Magic spells, as we would call them, that invoke the power of Solomon to make demons do things. So we have spells that say things like, “All of you demons who have sworn your loyalty to Solomon because he has the magic ring.” I now say that you must do such and such to that person, or you must protect me from this person. So, if you have the right words to say, and you can invoke Solomon’s power over the demons, you can make the demons do things. So we have spells that kind of build on his power over demons.

But interestingly, we also have spells that refer to his acquaintance with women and invoke him in essentially love spells. You know Solomon, who had such a way with women: “I call upon his power to make this other woman fall in love with me.” Solomon has some mojo, if you want to put it that way, that people can draw on in their magical work. There’s also quite a few amulets, things you’d wear to protect yourself from evil spirits and so on, that often had either a depiction of Solomon or some reference to his ring, or simply the word something like “the power of Solomon.” He really becomes a figure whose power over demons people feel they can use. And we have these texts that start to talk about books they know of Solomon, The Book of Solomon, which lists demons. Did these books exist? We’re not quite sure, but people talk about them.

Shirley

So this is just so—I don’t know—bizarre to be thinking about these things. But let me just ask you, what would you say is the connection? Why do we care about this? Why does this matter for Bible readers?

David

Well, I think what you’re seeing is that people who look to the Bible for their guidance in life and for the source of help for them in all sorts of situations in different times and places find different things in it. And find ways to bring the Bible into their lives. So people who lived in the Mediterranean world in the second through sixth or seventh centuries, one of the things that concerned them was the activity of demons. It was the stuff around them, evil spirits and so on. And by this time they had learned from the Bible, in their view, that Solomon was a source of information that could help them and power that could help them. So this is a great example of how the Bible has a kind of life in the people who use and read it. It doesn’t just sit there. I mean, it comes to life and is used in people’s lives for very particular and important things, not the kinds of things that we worry about, perhaps, in the 21st century, but certainly what people worried about back, you know, in the 4th and 5th centuries, for sure.

Shirley

What I find so intriguing about this is that I think you’re helping us to think about the fact that the Bible, and what’s important about it in our relationship to it, has kind of a history of reception that keeps on changing, and that different communities and different eras respond to it in different ways. And so we’re discovering a way of responding to it that’s very different from ours, but it was a genuine response. It wasn’t just sort of silly or magic or whatever. They had a real reason for the people to care about that because of the demons.

David

Oh yeah. The people who wrote things like the Testament of Solomon—these are smart people. And they are looking at what they see in Solomon’s story and figuring out what it could possibly mean. Knowledge about demons and thinking about them—this was something that very well-educated people engaged in in this period. I did write a book on demons, actually. So I’m totally into demons. You all may not be in the 21st century. But I wrote an old book on how monks were totally interested in demons. And it’s just a fascination of people in this period.

Shirley

Could you tell us more about that book? People might want to look that up.

David

Oh, okay. Well, I wrote a book called Demons and the Making of the Monk. It’s with Harvard University Press. And it’s very focused on monastic life and demons. But monks, too, did things like create lists of demons, usually demons that brought you to do certain sins, the demon of gluttony. The demon of sadness, the demon of anger, and so forth, and how you could deal with those demons. And monks often demonstrated their spiritual power through exorcisms. Casting demons out of people. And demons were there to tempt monks also by appearing to them as women or falsely as angels to lead them astray. So demons were just very alive and, for whatever reason, became an increasing concern in the second, third, and fourth centuries.

Shirley

Really fascinating.

All right, so thank you, David. Now we’re just about ready for everyone else to join our conversation. So while you all are thinking about your questions for David, I’m going to just remind you that your participation as a Bible and Beyond Patreon supporter is really important to us, and we are so very grateful for those of you who have already stepped up to make these events happen. Also, you should know that you, as Patreon supporters, are entitled to discounts for all of our Bible and Beyond courses when you become a Patreon supporter. And we have a brand new mini-course coming up on Sunday, March 8th called Jesus the Storyteller. It’s about his parables.

So, all right, let’s turn the mic over to everyone else and see where you want to go with this fascinating story that might be a surprise to most of you. It certainly was for me.

And while they’re thinking too, David, … I just want to go a little bit farther into this idea about… you call this “The Magical Solomon.” Did you think of Solomon as magical himself just because he was using these demons, or how would you characterize that?

David

Well, when I originally said it, I was thinking about Solomon in magical texts. So how do magical spells cast by Christians use Solomon, and how does Solomon appear? But the ancient people also felt as though Solomon could do magic. I mean, and in the Testament of Solomon, he has this ring. Magic is, as you all probably guessed, a controversial term. So I’m just using the term because, why not? But we should be clear that often “magic” could be used as a kind of very negative term, right? As something like illegitimate religion and so on. And people weren’t often saying, “Oh, Solomon is doing magic.” But it’s what we’re used to as scholars—to sometimes talk about these kinds of very directly powerful activities. That people do, especially to get things that are very kind of normal, like a love life and a good singing voice and stuff like that.

Shirley

Yes. – So interesting. All right, well, Sara has her hand up. … Sara, go ahead.

Sara Barnacle 

David, I think you were beginning to answer my question while I was writing it down. When you said that smart people were writing these texts, that really kind of rang a bell with me. And I see that you’re a smart person, if you don’t mind my saying so. And you know a whole lot about this. What is the influence of this train of thought widely, like in the church or in scholarship academia today?

David

There are different ways to answer that question. One thing I’ll say is that for a long time, scholars didn’t like talking about demons, even though they’re everywhere in ancient Christianity, because it did seem a little weird. And it seemed like something, a kind of side of Christianity that we didn’t like to talk about. I remember I wrote my first book on a major church father, Athanasius of Alexandria, who was a major theologian and who developed the Doctrine of the Trinity. And he wrote this Life of the Monk Antony with lots of demons. And I remember reading a scholar saying, “Can you believe it? This is such a smart man!” And he wrote about demons and he thought they existed. So on the one hand, scholars were a little embarrassed by this. And so it’s only in the last 50 years that you see a lot of scholarly work in which texts that have to do with demons are being published and so forth and so on.

But to go back in time to the church itself, right? Obviously in Christianity, the idea that there are demons never really goes away. People still believe in them. But in this very particular stream, demons end up becoming the seven deadly sins. So, one very important monk who lived in the late 300s, Evagrius of Pontus, wrote a book where he cataloged the demons, and he came up with eight primary demons. Demon of gluttony, demon of fornication, bad sex, demon of anger, demon of sadness, demon of pride. And what happens is that this morphs down to just seven.

And then in the Latin church, they start talking about them as the spirits of these things, which sounds a little less scary than demons. It’s kind of because you can think of spirit as just being “I have a spirit of joy with me.” You know, it doesn’t feel necessarily like a demon, but eventually it simply becomes the seven deadly sins rather than the eight primary demons. So it has this life that goes into the church that we sometimes don’t recognize. But what happens eventually is we begin to think about sin and bad things as mainly coming from inside of us instead of outside of us. And so bad demons start to become the bad things we ourselves think about and do. So  it keeps going in different ways.

Shirley

Fascinating question and fascinating answer. Thank you for that one. Katie, go ahead.

Katie Grigg-Miller

Yeah, I hope I didn’t miss this, but I feel like I’m hearing you say or talk about a text of the Testament of Solomon. And I’m not seeing that anywhere in the write-up of tonight’s Discussion. So I’m just wondering if I missed what that is or where it came from.

David

No, yeah, sorry about that, but the Testament of Solomon was not listed as one of the things I would be talking about, but because what Shirley heard was what I was asked to speak about Solomon in this one set of texts. But the kind of central text that is the Solomon wise demon fighting dude, text from the early period is this thing called the Testament of Solomon. Originally written in Greek, it would not be characterized as Gnostic. And it is definitely Christian. It feels like it’s Jewish, but at one point a demon says, “I’m going to leave stuff at Golgotha,” so clearly they have Christian stuff in mind. But what you see in the text I look at in Gnostic, magical, and hermetic texts are bunches of little ideas. Solomon had demons help him build the temple. When they were done building the temple, he put them in jars and sealed them up. This is a kind of fun part so that they wouldn’t do anything bad. But then when the Romans came and destroyed the temple, they broke the jars. And that’s why there are now lots of demons out and about because they were let out of their jars. Now, these little tidbits occur in my texts, but they’re all there in the Testament of Solomon. And so the question becomes, did they all read the Testament of Solomon? Well, we’re not so sure. So the Testament of Solomon is just kind of out there as a place where you can find all this stuff, but this stuff ends up in all these different things.

I’m sorry about that, that it was not there. The Testament of Solomon is usually found in collections with titles like Old Testament Pseudepigrapha or Old Testament Apocrypha. Because it’s having to do with an Old Testament character, but definitely not part of anybody’s Bible. But it’s out there. Maybe there’s a text online. But anyway, I’ll stop talking.

Katie

It’s not the same as the Wisdom of Solomon, is it?

David

No, great question, though! So Wisdom of Solomon is in the Bible for Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians, also written in Greek. But there isn’t much about demons. There’s just kind of one line where Solomon is praying for wisdom, and among the things he prays to know is the powers of the spirits. So they, that’s a sign in the Wisdom of Solomon that they’re already thinking that if you’re as wise as Solomon, you’re going to know things about the spirits. Which are also the demons. But no, not the same as Wisdom of Solomon.

Yeah, not at all.

Shirley

I’m glad you asked that second question. Thank you. Peggy.

Peggy Williams

I think you sold your book a little short. I did laugh and chuckle when you said you guys may not be that into demons. But when you go to the rest of the title about spiritual combat in early Christianity, I think that’s a bigger sell here. And the book looks very interesting. I put up the Amazon link mostly so you all could see the book and see more about what it’s about. It may not be the best place to buy it.

David

It’s too much money. Don’t buy it.

Yeah, don’t buy it. It costs too much money. 

Peggy

That’s what I was gently trying to say. It may not be the place you want to buy it, but there are other places. You all know where to go look for biblical things and find things: half-price books or wherever. But it looks like a very interesting book to me.

And one other comment I wanted to make. I used to be pretty active with the Biblical Archaeology Society, and I was in a seminar that was talking about how the stones of the temple had been perfectly cut before they got up to the site. And I think it is important for all of us. Part of our search is finding validation in different ways, whether you think demons cut them or people that were far away from the temple cut them or this was brought together by prayer. But it’s a fact. Archaeologists said so; therefore, it must be true. I just throw that in there. But anyhow, I just think it’s interesting when we find those ways where a lot of different information will cross. So thank you.

David

You know, since you mentioned the book, which does cost a lot of money, I’ll tell you guys a kind of funny story about demons and me. I have another demon book, which is my translation of a book. The guy who wrote the These are the Eight Primary Demons, he wrote a book. This is ancient; his name’s Evagrius of Pontus; it’s called Talking Back. And he gives you all the thoughts a demon might suggest to you. Like the demon of gluttony might say to you, “Oh, it’s Christmas. Go ahead and eat as much as you want,” which is a demonic thought because you really shouldn’t do that. And he gives you a Bible verse to reply to each of these thoughts. So I translated this book, Talking Back. It’s kind of just a little book. It’s 490 thoughts that demons might suggest to you. And monks bought it. Lots of monks invited me to come and speak at monasteries about the history of demonic conflict, until an evangelical pastor wrote a book about Spiritual Combat Today and mentioned my book as a great example of how you should do it. And now it’s like my best-selling book. It’s a book about a guy called Talking Back. You found it, a monastic handbook for combating demons. It’s like one of the best selling, like if you look up books on monasticism on Amazon, it’s always like in the top 10. And it’s goofy because I would never have anticipated I would be known as “demon boy.” I mean, I’m the demon expert. So anyway, it’s very funny, but it was this evangelical pastor, whom I’ve never met, who promoted it as this is a great book and everything. And the press that published it is this nice Benedictine Catholic publisher in Minnesota.

Yeah. And, you know, so they were not at all prepared. Suddenly the orders came in like gangbusters, and they didn’t have enough books. They had to ramp up the press and everything. So it just goes to show you that we may be sitting here going, “Wow, people are interested in demons!” People are still very interested in demons. So my best-selling book by far of what I have done is a translation of this monastic handbook for combating demons, and people are totally into it.

Shirley

Well, I’m not sure that our little group has that much power to do that to you, David, but we’ll try.

David

It’s all fine. I’m glad people are reading the real author of it. It’s this monk named Evagrius who was really, really smart so the important thing is that people are getting his wisdom, which is very interesting even though it’s all about demons.

Shirley

So fascinating oh my goodness. Maureen

Maureen Blake

Okay, two things, and correct me if I’m wrong on this one, because I don’t want to oversimplify, but it feels like the Solomon that I’ve gotten to know in the canonical Bible I have now feels like it’s Cliff’s Notes, and that all this other information would fill in the blanks. And also, have we been given in the canon a sanitized version? You know, that’s just a thought. But then the other one is when you were talking, all the different things that people would say, and you have the power over this and power over that. The word “power” stuck in my head because it seems like so many of these things we read about are about who’s got the power and who’s in charge of something. And if a whole bunch of lesser people than the king or whatever have this power, people at the top of the heap might not like that. I mean, so maybe it’s not in the canon because whoever compiled the canon didn’t want us ordinary immortals to think we could have some power over something, so anyway, it goes maybe way off what you said, but that’s what has hit me so far.

David

Well, I think obviously, the texts I’m talking about are written well after I Kings. If I Kings is not telling us the stuff that’s actually in these things, then this stuff had to somehow survive for a long period of time. As someone who’s also read the Bible for more years than I like to think of by now, what always strikes me about, especially the Old Testament and its portrayal of these people—Saul, David, Solomon, Moses, all these folks—is how frank it is. I mean, I’m always amazed that they’re not more heroic, these folks, if you think about it. Look at Jacob and Esau. I mean, Jacob was terrible. You know, he’s cheating his brother out of his inheritance and something. And Solomon is indeed a kind of not-great guy. And so what I kind of like about the later stuff I’m looking at is they kind of go with that. They’re not like, “Oh, let’s try to make Solomon better than he was.” I mean, they really build up his wisdom, but they don’t ignore everything else. They recognize the flawed nature of a lot of these people. And I think it’s quite remarkable how the biblical authors, they’re clearly not telling us everything they know. Of course not. But they’re also not in some ways shying away from the less-than-wonderful aspects of the men they talk about and the women.

Maureen

Maybe a different takeaway. If they could be seen as heroic figures, but very flawed, maybe that opens the door for us to be flawed, but still have our ability to muster to be heroic at some point.

David

I’m totally with you on that. And since I’m more a New Testament scholar than an Old Testament scholar, when I teach the New Testament, I really have to point out to the students how bad the disciples look in the Gospel of Mark. Y’all just go read the Gospel of Mark. They are just like terrible. I mean, they don’t understand what Jesus is saying. Like Peter says, “Oh, I’ll be with you.” But no, he’s not. One thing after another, they’re not great. And the students are like, why would they tell the story that way? And I’m thinking, well, first of all, they probably were flawed people. I mean, you know, they probably weren’t perfect.

But anyone who read Mark in antiquity and today knows that as flawed as these disciples were, they ended up going around and spreading this message and being martyred. So yeah, a lot of the message of these things is, “Yes, these are flawed people.” But they still, somehow, are part of God’s plan. And I think that should be a happy message for any of us who are flawed, which definitely includes me. But obviously some of you here are probably not flawed at all. So I hope I’m not offending you. Yes, I totally agree with that.

Maureen

Thank you.

Shirley

Thank you so much for that, Maureen. And Tina, go ahead.

Tina Owen

I can’t even remember the name of the Nag Hammadi book— one of them that you recommended for us to read before this. But it had a list of like 12 different scenarios, I’m going to say. And maybe number seven had to do with Yaldabaoth. What is that about?

David

Okay. I think the one that had Yaldabaoth in it and had all these different scenarios, that was probably the Second Discourse of Great Seth, or something like that. That text is a kind of interesting text. It’s kind of Gnostic-adjacent, I like to put it, because it doesn’t have the full Gnostic myth in it. But that’s an interesting work because its whole point is to attack Christians who think the crucifixion is the most important thing about Jesus. And so it’s attacking them. And one way it does that is by listing things that are absurd about what they believe.

Tina

About what about those who believe?

David

And the Christians who are what we would call Orthodox? Who think the important thing is that Jesus died on the cross. And they start listing all these things. And one of them is Solomon. They say Solomon is a joke. So they really are kind of going after Christians who have a certain view of what we’re familiar with, that is that Jesus died on the cross and that’s the most important thing about him. And they’re like, no, you should not be believing in this dead dude. And it’s Jesus who’s speaking; by the way, you should believe in these other things. And so, what they’re trying to do is, as aggressively as possible, convince their fellow Christians that what they normally think is wrong and to believe differently.

Tina

Thank you.

Shirley

Thank you for that, Tina. I’m glad you brought that up for us. And Katie, go ahead again.

Katie Grigg-Miller

Oh, please tell us about death having sex with himself.

David

That is something, is it not? So this is from this text called On the Origin of the World. And it is… A mishmash of all sorts of things. But it and other texts are often finding that death and other kinds of evil forces are personified. They see them as actual beings, which you already see happening in Paul. Paul will talk about sin and death as kind of like taking us and stuff like this. And yes, so they often will adduce androgyny among these beings as a kind of sign of their not quite conforming to norms: To their being kind of strange beings that are odd and weird. How death was androgynous and had sex with himself. I’m not quite sure how that works, to be blunt, but nonetheless, he does.

And then he produces these seven androgynous children. But you can see they’re trying to tell where all these horrible things come from. The names of the male children are envy, wrath, tear, sighs, grief, lament, tearful groans. And the women are anger, pain, lust, sighs, curses, bitterness. All the stuff that torments us in our life, where does it come from? And this text offers that it comes from death, this bad being. So they have sex with each other and produce seven children so that the children total 49 androgynous demons. And then what’s interesting is the author says you’ll find their names and functions in the Book of Solomon.

And we don’t know this Book of Solomon. And people argue about whether he is referring to the Testament of Solomon, which does have a lot of names of demons, but certainly not of 49 androgynous ones. Or is he just kind of making it up, like saying sometimes ancient authors would make up books and refer to them to show how learned they were. “Well, I’ve read the Book of Solomon,” and so forth. Or was there really a Book of Solomon that we no longer have that had a list of these demons? That’s very possible because there’s lots of stuff. So, a lot of these Nag Hammadi texts that have these strange myths, they’re often about where do the things that torment us—things like pain and lust and anger—where do they come from? And they often attribute them to these higher beings and attribute to these beings kind of sexual activity. So it’s crazy.

Shirley

That’s an inspiring topic. Tina, go ahead. We’ll have the last question with Tina.

Tina

Well, when I read the names that you just read off of that got created in this weird way, what I see is that we, ourselves, are not connecting with a more spiritual thought and we’re getting caught up in this ugliness. And so it’s like when we just stay with ourselves, it gets ugly. And with Shirley’s book on the Secret Revelation of John, or the Apocryphon of John, I’m getting the impression that being the human creator is what gets us into a lot of problems. And that’s another way of, once again, we’re just doing it with ourselves. We’re not doing it as a spiritual thing. We’re not getting a spiritual intuition. We’re getting this, “I can create this thing, idea or program or something.”

David

Yes. I mean, the message of these texts—I mean, we’re finding it—oh, wow, they’re so into grief and anger and all these demons and so forth and so on. But obviously, the message they want to communicate to us is that, you know, if we can get in touch with and it wants us to, the higher power that transcends these lower beings that are trying to enslave us and distract us and lead us into grief and pain, then there’s a way out of this. I mean, their ultimate, for them, knowledge is power. So knowing the names of all these androgynous demons and knowing the names of these things is a way of controlling it and figuring it out and knowing that you can get out of it.

So, why focus so much on demons and list them and know their functions? Because you need to know your enemy, so to speak, and you need to know what you’re up against. But the ultimate message is meant to be very positive and hopeful about what can be. I think the secret—Shirley will know this better—but the Secret Revelation of John also lists all sorts of demons. But again, the goal is a positive message.

Shirley

It sure is. Yeah, thank you for that, Tina. Very insightful and helpful. And thank you, David, for responding to that. Honor, do you have a quick one? We can finish up with you, then.

Honor Haase

I was surprised, in the materials we were given to read beforehand, by the use of the word ”joke.” This is not something you usually see in the kind of stuff we’re reading. And you said that (I don’t remember what group it was, or what writer felt that it was a joke) to put such emphasis on the crucifixion. Well, that writer or that group, what did they suggest would be a better thing to emphasize?

David

The other thing would be to emphasize the knowledge—’gnosis‘ in Greek—that Jesus brings us about ourselves and about the true higher God. That’s where the real meaning lies. It is not in the death of a person. And there’s another Nag Hammadi text where Jesus is actually watching his own crucifixion and laughing. Because people think that this is where they’re going to find salvation, but they’re really not. The Second Discourse of the Great Seth starts with Moses. Moses is a joke. David is a joke. Solomon’s a joke.

Honor

Everybody’s a joke, but this guy.

David

Yes. Yeah. So it’s a joke in the sense of being worthy of being laughed at. And, you know, this is rough stuff, some of it. They’re not being very kind to one another sometimes, it must be said. But anyway, no, what you should concentrate on is the knowledge and awareness of your true self and of God that Jesus brought. That’s what he brought. He didn’t bring death. That’s the message of these.

Honor

That sounds reasonable to me. Thank you.

Shirley

Thank you, Honor. And that is a more hopeful note for us to end on here.

This is a fascinating topic for you to bring to us, David. I can’t thank you enough for that. Helping stretch us and let us grow and understand more what to be looking for and how we’re responding to these things. Very, very helpful.

So I want to thank everybody for your participation in this. And we’ll close out tonight by reminding you that this was the February 2026 Bible and Beyond Discussion, titled “The Gnostic and Magical Solomon,” with our guest scholar, Dr. David Brakke.

Thank you for being with us for our monthly Bible and Beyond Discussion. These are discussions led by a knowledgeable scholar who provides a thoughtful overview of some early Christian texts. For the last half hour, participants have a chance to ask their own questions. We usually meet on the fourth Monday of the month from 8 to 9 p.m. Eastern Time.

I also want to remind you, don’t forget about going to BibleAndBeyond.courses to sign up for the new mini course on Jesus the Storyteller. That’s on Sunday, March 8th. So let me tell you who’s coming next month. We have Professor Adele Reinhart, who’s going to be talking about “Parting of the Ways between Judaism and Christianity,” and the way our thoughts about that have evolved over the past few centuries. And that will be on the fourth Monday of the month, on March 23rd. So please, everyone, join me in a special thanks to David for coming to be with us tonight and helping us to bring us these new insights on the world beyond the Bible, especially the focus on Solomon.

David

Thanks so much. Thank you for having me.

Peggy

Shirley, excuse me. Wasn’t there a PDF you were going to tell people how to see of David’s? –

Shirley

Thank you, yes. David, would you tell us? I’m going to post this on the show notes, which will have the transcript and the whole video recording of this event on our website, but David, tell us what you’re going to show us.

David

Okay, so she’s also going to post a PDF, a handout, that has little excerpts about Solomon from texts we talked about, but also ones we didn’t. And perhaps the most fun will be two magical spells in which Solomon appears. So you may find that fun. So yeah, so there it is. We tried to put it in the chat and Zoom wouldn’t let me. It said, no, you may not do that! So anyway, so you can go get it on the website.

Shirley 

We haven’t conquered that demon quite yet.

David

No, no. The demons are all over the place. We need Solomon around to help us with the electronics.

Shirley

Hopefully by tomorrow, or at least by Wednesday, we’ll have it all posted for you. So thank you so much for being there.