The first nine Psalms of Solomon were screened against every verse of the Greek New Testament and every other Greek Old Testament unit held here, and their two deepest contacts are not in the New Testament at all. The collection’s first line — I cried unto the Lord when I was in distress (Gray’s 1913 English, as is the Psalm 8 line below) — shares six consecutive Greek words with the first line of the first Song of Ascents (Psalm 120:1). Psalm 8’s charge — They committed adultery, every man with his neighbour's wife — shares six with Ezekiel 22:11. In the 30,348 Greek Old Testament units screened, each six-word sequence stands in exactly two places, and from either side of each pair the other is the only unit that reaches six. Against the Greek New Testament nothing here reaches six, and the three runs of five are a stock phrase and two clause-seams. And one count worth having before you read: the word sinner stands thirteen times in these nine psalms, all of them in Psalms 1–4 — Psalm 8, which lists Jerusalem’s sins at length, never uses it. The Psalms of Solomon are not Scripture for us: they are read here as a Second-Temple witness, and tested by the canon. See the method →
Eighteen psalms in Greek, every one after the first headed with Solomon’s name. G. Buchanan Gray, whose 1913 English is printed here, described them as “written, according to the theory (see below) now generally accepted, in the middle of the first century B.C.” (Gray, Introduction §1, p. 625). They are not Scripture for us, and they are not among the deuterocanonical books either. We read them as we read the other Second-Temple books — as a window on how Jewish prayer sounded in the century before Christ (on Gray’s dating) — critically, gratefully for the light they throw, and testing everything by the canon. Where, on this church’s reading, they say more than Scripture says — at 3:8 the righteous man, in Gray’s English, maketh atonement for (sins of) ignorance by fasting and afflicting his soul; at 9:4, our works are in the choice and power of our soul (the page’s literal gloss) — the page reports what the text says and does not adopt it. The “son of David” of Psalm 17 belongs to the next page; nothing on this page identifies anyone in Psalms 1–9 with Christ.
⚠️ What this page can and cannot measure — read this first.
HELD: the CATSS Greek of the whole book (PsSol.mlxx: 310 rows — 293 verses and 17 title rows, every title labelled 0:0; this page covers 162 verses and 8 titles); G. Buchanan Gray’s English (1913), 310 rows keyed to the CATSS numbering, with his bold (Ryle & James) numbering beside it; the page images of the 1913 volume, from which every note of Gray’s quoted here was read; the Greek Old Testament files (30,348 verse units screened, the Odes excluded); and the 7,927 verses of the Greek New Testament (SBLGNT).
NOT HELD: any Hebrew text of these psalms — Gray: “It may be regarded as practically certain (see below, § 4) that the Psalms were originally written in Hebrew: but this Hebrew original has perished and no testimony to it even survives.” (Gray, Introduction §1, p. 625); the Syriac version his notes cite; von Gebhardt’s 1895 edition and Rahlfs’s apparatus, so the Greek column cannot be checked against the manuscripts here; and any KJV, Vulgate or ESV — none of them contains this book.
CONSEQUENCE: every measurement on this page is Greek against Greek. The Hebrew-side screens (acrostic, Masoretic parallels) cannot run at all. The date, the setting and the Pompey reading cannot be measured here; where the page reports them it says whose they are.
Psalms of Solomon 1–9 — thirteen rows, Greek and English
Greek: CATSS (Rahlfs) · English: G. Buchanan Gray, in Charles, APOT II (Oxford, 1913), public domain · CATSS numbers, Gray’s bold numbers in brackets where they differThe first line of the collection. Its first six words after the verb, πρὸς κύριον ἐν τῷ θλίβεσθαί με, to the Lord when I was in distress, stand in one other unit of the 30,348 Greek Old Testament units screened: Greek Psalm 119:1, the first Song of Ascents (Psalm 120:1 in Hebrew and English). Band 1 from both sides — Stage 4. Gray’s [ ] stands where the Greek carries εἰς τέλος, which his English does not render; his note: “G adds εἰς τέλος, which may be (1) a mistranslated and misplaced title = ‘To the chief musician’” (Gray, note on I. 1, p. 631) … “or (2) an intensification: ‘When I was in sore distress’” (Gray, note on I. 1, p. 631).
Gray prints a gap; the Greek row is whole. It ends καὶ οὐκ ἤνεγκαν, and they did not bear (it) — Gray’s note: “G οὐκ ἤνεγκαν, ‘they brought not’.” (Gray, note on I. 6, p. 631)
The sinner, singular, with a battering-ram. The run engine’s deepest Greek Old Testament neighbour for this verse is Greek Psalm 9:23 (Hebrew and English 10:2) — four words, band 1 from both sides — and it stops at the noun: the Psalter’s τὸν ἀσεβῆ, the ungodly, against this verse’s τὸν ἁμαρτωλὸν. Gray’s note at this verse: “Cp. Ps. x. 2.” (Gray, note on II. 1, p. 631)
Gray’s dotted line, and a conjecture in the Greek. The CATSS row ends οὐκ εὐδοκῶ ἐν αὐτοῖς, I take no pleasure in them. Gray’s note: “The sense of the original in vv. 4b, 5a, cannot be determined” (Gray, note on II. 4, 5, p. 632); and “Hilgenfeld conjectured εὐδοκῶ ἐν αὐτοῖς for εὐόδωκεν (R J L: εὐώδωκεν H) αὐτοῖς; and this is adopted by von Gebhardt” (Gray, note on II. 4, 5, p. 632). The words the Greek column prints here are, on Gray’s account, an editor’s conjecture.
None to bury. καὶ οὐκ ἦν ὁ θάπτων stands, word for word, in one other screened unit: Greek Psalm 78:3 (Psalm 79:3). From this verse’s side the band is 1; from Greek Psalm 78:3’s side it is 2 — Stage 4.
Rise to eternal life. ἀναστήσονται εἰς ζωὴν αἰώνιον — the four words stand in no other screened Greek Old Testament unit and in no New Testament verse. The last three stand in both Greek Daniels at 12:2 and here, and in nine New Testament verses.
The men-pleasers. ἀνθρωπαρέσκων is a word the Greek Old Testament units screened here carry five times: four in Psalm of Solomon 4 (with its title) and once in Greek Psalm 52:6 — where God scatters the bones of men-pleasers. The run between the two verses is one word.
Birds and fish. τὰ πετεινὰ καὶ τοὺς ἰχθύας occurs nowhere else in the Greek Old Testament units screened. Against Matthew 6:26, where the Father feeds the birds, the run is two (τὰ πετεινὰ).
The second six. ἕκαστος τὴν γυναῖκα τοῦ πλησίον αὐτοῦ, every man the wife of his neighbour, stands in exactly one other screened unit: Ezekiel 22:11, in the oracle against the city of blood. Band 1 from both sides.
Menstrual blood. ἐν ἀφέδρῳ — the two words stand together in one other screened unit, Ezekiel 18:6, and Gray’s note on this line sends the reader there: “See Lev. xii. 1-8, xv. 19-33; Ezek. xviii. 6; Lev. xv. 31; Deut. xii. 15.” (Gray, note on VIII. 13 b, p. 640)
“him that is from the end of the earth” ἀπ' ἐσχάτου τῆς γῆς stands in eight other screened units — Deuteronomy 28:49, Isaiah 45:22 and six in Greek Jeremiah. Band 8. The page does not choose among them.
Choice and power. ἐν ἐκλογῇ stands nowhere else in the Greek Old Testament units screened. Gray’s note: “subject to our own choice and power, lit. ‘in the choice and power of our soul’.” (Gray, note on IX. 7, p. 642)
Two things at once. χρηστεύσῃ is the only form of χρηστεύομαι in the screened Greek Old Testament; the verb’s one New Testament use is 1 Corinthians 13:4, and the two verses share no word at all. And the row reads the second person, καθαριεῖς, you will cleanse, where Gray’s English has He: “Von Gebhardt conjecturally restores the 2nd person in vv. 12 and 14.” (Gray, note on IX. 11, p. 642)
Versification — the third state, stated as on every page here.
There is no Masoretic Psalms of Solomon, no ESV, no KJV and no Vulgate — none of those texts contains the book — so the shelf’s usual Hebrew/Greek/English offset has nothing to apply to. What exists is three numberings of one Greek text, and this page states all three.
• CATSS (Rahlfs) — the numbers this page cites. Psalms 1–9: 8·37·12·25·19·6·10·34·11 = 162 verses, plus 8 title rows (Psalms 2–9; Psalm 1 has none). CATSS labels every title 0:0; this page calls the title of Psalm n “n:0”.
• Gray’s parenthesised numbers. They coincide with CATSS at the start of 157 of the 162 verses; CATSS starts a verse where Gray does not at 3:2, 5:19, 8:5, 9:10 and 9:11. The 1913 print has two slips here: at CATSS 4:25 it prints (28) for (25), and at CATSS 4:14 it omits the (14).
• Gray’s bold numbers — Ryle & James (1891), the numbers the older English literature and Gray’s own notes use. Psalms 1–9: 8·41·16·29·22·9·9·40·20 = 194 verses. Psalm by psalm the bold count exceeds the CATSS count by 0, +4, +4, +4, +3, +3, −1, +6 and +9 — CATSS 9:11 is bold 9:20, and Psalm 7 is the one psalm here where the bold count is lower.
Where a bold number differs, the page gives it in brackets. Canonical Psalm numbers are the Greek Psalter’s (CATSS): Greek 119:1 is Psalm 120:1 in Hebrew and English Bibles, and Greek 78:3 is Psalm 79:3; other Greek Psalm numbers are labelled Greek.
The Shape of the Passage
Sequence — nine psalms, measured markers, not a chiasm⚠️ This is NOT offered as a chiasm. Psalms 2 and 8 stand second and eighth of nine, which is symmetrical about Psalm 5; but no measured feature pairs 3 with 7, 4 with 6 or 1 with 9, and a symmetry of two positions is arithmetic, not evidence of design. The titles name a genre or a theme, not a structure, and the page claims no more than it can count.
⚠️ Where this page sits. The Psalms of Solomon are filed here under Pseudepigrapha & Second Temple. They are not Scripture for Pleasant Springs and they are not among the deuterocanonical books either; nothing taught here rests on them.
Author
Anonymous. Every title in Psalms 2–9 names Solomon — ψαλμὸς τῷ Σαλωμων and its variants — and Psalm 1 has no title at all. Gray described the eighteen as “written, according to the theory (see below) now generally accepted, in the middle of the first century B.C.” (Gray, Introduction §1, p. 625) — some nine centuries after Solomon. The name is a heading; this page cannot test who wrote under it.
A first-person voice opens Psalm 1 (I cried), speaks again in Psalm 2 (2:14–15, 2:22–26) and Psalm 5 (5:2, 5:8), and opens Psalm 8 (my ear heard). In Psalm 1 the voice says twice, I was full of righteousness — the same two Greek words at 1:2 and 1:3 — before learning that the sins of the prosperous were in secret. That voice is grammatically feminine in the Greek: at 1:3 the CATSS parsing marks πολλὴν, ‘great’ (in children), as feminine. Psalm 1 names no speaker and no city.
Audience
The devout — ὅσιοι, a word these nine psalms use eight times — set against sinners and men-pleasers. Psalm 4 opens on a profane man sitting in the council of the devout (ἐν συνεδρίῳ ὁσίων).
A city after a siege, and a people scattered. Walls battered (2:1), the altar trampled (2:2), gates opened to a conqueror (8:17), and the dispersion of Israel among every nation (ἡ διασπορὰ τοῦ Ισραηλ, 9:2). Who the conqueror was is the commentators’ question, and Stage 2 reports Gray’s answer as his.
Orient on the collection, its title, and its text.
Search by topic: Psalms of Solomon; Pompey; Hasmoneans; Pharisees; Pseudepigrapha; Ryle and James; von Gebhardt. None of the reference works named below is held on this disk; the entries are subjects to look up, and their exact titles were not checked.
Which articles are relevant?
- Anchor Bible Dictionary — Psalms of Solomon; Pompey; Hasmonean dynasty; Pharisees.
- Eerdmans Dictionary of Early Judaism — Psalms of Solomon; messianism; the righteous and the sinner.
- Dictionary of New Testament Background (IVP) — Psalms of Solomon; Roman rule in Judea.
- On the text — any article that says which Greek it quotes. The CATSS text, Gray’s 1913 English and the bold-numbered literature before Rahlfs do not number the verses alike (see the versification note), and an article citing Ps. Sol. 2:31 may mean CATSS 2:27.
Bibliography surfaced:
- G. Buchanan Gray, “The Psalms of Solomon”, in R. H. Charles (ed.), The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English, vol. II (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913), pp. 625–652. Held, printed and quoted on this page.
- H. E. Ryle and M. R. James, their 1891 Cambridge edition — the source of Gray’s bold verse numbers. An OCR of it is on this disk; it was used only to confirm numbering, not read for this page.
- Oscar von Gebhardt, his 1895 edition of the Greek — the text Gray’s notes discuss. Not held.
- Alfred Rahlfs, Septuaginta — the edition behind the CATSS file. The apparatus is not held.
- Robert B. Wright, a critical edition of the Greek text (2007), and Kenneth Atkinson, I Cried to the Lord (2004) — named as next steps; neither is held and neither was consulted.
A city taken, a conqueror killed abroad — and whose reading that is.
The historical identification is the one thing in this stage this page cannot measure. It is reported here in Gray’s words, with his page.
Which parallels shed light on the world of the text?
Gray read Psalms 2 and 8 against Pompey’s capture of Jerusalem. On 2:1: “The 3rd pers. sing. in this verse and below may refer in particular to Pompey, or, being used collectively, to the Roman army” (Gray, note on II. 1, p. 631). On the dragon of 2:25: “the dragon. Seems clearly to be ‘the insolent one slain on the mountains of Egypt’ (v. 30), i.e. Pompey; cp. the comparison of Nebuchadnezzar with a dragon in Jer. li. 34, yet see above (p. 630, n. 2)” (Gray, note on II. 29, p. 633). (Gray’s bold v. 30 is CATSS 2:26.) That note sends the reader back to his p. 630, whose one footnote reads: “Note also Cheyne’s rejection of the identification of Pompey with the dragon of ii (Hibbert Journal, Oct. 1910, p. 207 f.)” (Gray, Introduction §5, footnote, p. 630). Those are Gray’s identifications, together with his own pointer to a dissent from the second of them. The Greek of these psalms names no Roman, no Pompey and no year.
What the text itself carries is a sequence of events. A sinner batters down walls with a ram (2:1); alien nations go up to the altar in their sandals (2:2); in Psalm 8 a man from the end of the earth is met by the rulers of the land with joy (8:16), the gates are opened (8:17), and then he takes the towers and the wall (8:19), kills the rulers and the wise (8:20) and leads away sons and daughters (8:21). At 2:26–27 the proud one is shown slain on the mountains of Egypt, his body carried on the waves with none to bury him.
- Josephus, Antiquities 14 and War 1 — the accounts Gray’s notes cite for the rams from Tyre and the taking of the Temple. Niese’s Greek of the Antiquities is held on this disk (Perseus, CC BY-SA), but no text of the War is; neither was measured for this page, and no run between Josephus and these psalms is reported.
- The Greek Psalter → Psalms of Solomon 1–9. Measured: of the 46 verses whose deepest Greek Old Testament run has a band of 1, 14 find it in the Greek Psalter — the largest share of any book, from a Psalter that is 2,534 of the 30,038 units searched. A collection of psalms sounds like the Psalter; this counts how much, and asserts nothing about who learned from whom.
- Ezekiel 18 and 22 ↔ Psalm of Solomon 8:9–13. Ezekiel’s indictment of Jerusalem lists holy things despised (22:8), a father’s nakedness uncovered and a woman in her impurity humbled (22:10), the neighbour’s wife (22:11); Psalm 8 lists incest, the neighbour’s wife, the holy things plundered and the sacrifices defiled with menstrual blood. The topics line up; the measured words line up at two places (Stage 4). No dependence is asserted.
8:3. The CATSS row reads ποῦ ἄρα κρινεῖ αὐτὸν ὁ θεός, where, then, will God judge him? Gray prints Surely (?) God judgeth us, and his note begins: “Surely. G S ‘where, then’ (will God, &c.)” (Gray, note on VIII. 3, p. 640) — and goes on to argue that neither Hebrew word the Greek where would imply could mean surely in such a context, and that the Hebrew was possibly already corrupt.
2:22. The CATSS row has the Lord’s hand heavy ἐπὶ Ιερουσαλημ, on Jerusalem; Gray’s English has on Israel, and his note gives his witnesses: “Israel. So R (ἰηλ) S: other MSS. of G ‘Jerusalem’.” (Gray, note on II. 24, p. 633) So one of the six Jerusalems counted in Psalm 2 is not in the English printed here.
2:25. The CATSS row reads τοῦ εἰπεῖν τὴν ὑπερηφανίαν, to speak the pride; Gray prints To turn the pride of the dragon into dishonour: “To turn. S ‘To cast down’, G ‘To say’.” (Gray, note on II. 29, p. 633)
None of this is a fault in either column. It is why the page measures the Greek and quotes the English, and never infers the one from the other.
Sinner, devout, righteous — and where the word sinner stops.
Word counts are LEMMA counts from the CATSS lemma column (so every inflected form counts), over the 162 verses and 8 titles of Psalms 1–9 unless a wider scope is named. Greek Old Testament counts are over the 30,348 units screened (63 CATSS files, the Odes excluded); New Testament counts over the 7,927 SBLGNT verses. Not over “the Septuagint”.
Thirteen times in Psalms 1–9, and all thirteen are in Psalms 1–4. Counted on the CATSS lemma column — and Gray’s English has sinner exactly as often in each of the nine psalms (and pious exactly as often as ὅσιος), so an English reader can check the count. Psalms 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 do not use the word once — and the run of silence goes on through Psalms 10 and 11; it returns at 12. Psalm 8, the psalm that lists Jerusalem’s sins at greatest length, calls no one a sinner: its word is ἁμαρτία, sin, and its sinners are they. At 2:1 the word is singular and names the conqueror, τὸν ἁμαρτωλὸν.
Eight times in Psalms 1–9; twenty-one in the whole book. The whole Greek Psalter, about seven times longer (34,964 CATSS words against 4,926), has it twenty-six times. Per thousand words that is 4.26 in the Psalms of Solomon and 0.74 in the Psalter. The devout are the community these psalms speak for: the council of the devout (4:1), the devout of God like innocent lambs (8:23).
Nineteen times in Psalms 1–9, eight of them in Psalm 3 (one in its title, ψαλμὸς τῷ Σαλωμων περὶ δικαίων) and six in Psalm 2. Psalm 3 sets the two figures in parallel: προσέκοψεν ὁ δίκαιος, the righteous stumbled (3:5), and προσέκοψεν ἁμαρτωλὸς, a sinner stumbled (3:9) — the one justified the Lord, the other curses his life.
Five times in the Greek Old Testament units screened here: four in Psalm of Solomon 4 (title, 4:7, 4:8, 4:19) and once in Greek Psalm 52:6 — διεσκόρπισεν ὀστᾶ ἀνθρωπαρέσκων, scattered the bones of men-pleasers. Psalm of Solomon 4:19 prays that the flesh of men-pleasers be scattered by beasts and the bones of the lawless lie in the sun. The longest run between 4:19 and Greek Psalm 52:6 is the single word. Twice in the Greek New Testament: Ephesians 6:6 and Colossians 3:22.
Twelve occurrences in nine screened units: ten in seven verses of Leviticus 12 and 15, one in Ezekiel 18:6, one in Psalm of Solomon 8:12. The two words ἐν ἀφέδρῳ, with nothing between them, stand only in Ezekiel 18:6 and here. Zero in the Greek New Testament.
Once in the screened Greek Old Testament (9:6) and once in the Greek New Testament (1 Corinthians 13:4, love is kind). The two verses share no word at all: a run of 0, in the convention where 0 means not one shared word. This reproduces exactly what the shelf’s 1 Corinthians 12–14 page publishes.
The three words, psalm by psalm (CATSS lemma counts; titles included):
| Psalm | verses | Jerusalem | ἁμαρτωλός sinner | δίκαιος righteous | ὅσιος devout |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 8 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| 2 | 37 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 1 |
| 3 | 12 | 0 | 3 | 8 | 1 |
| 4 | 25 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 3 |
| 5 | 19 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| 6 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 7 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 8 | 34 | 6 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| 9 | 11 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 |
| 1–9 | 162 | 12 | 13 | 19 | 8 |
Jerusalem counts the name’s forms in the Greek. Gray’s English would give different numbers: at 2:22 he has Israel, and at 8:18 he supplies (Jerusalem) in parentheses where the Greek has no name.
Two sixes that hold from both sides, and a New Testament ceiling of five.
Every one of the 162 verses screened against all 7,927 verses of the Greek New Testament, and against the Greek Old Testament: the 30,348 units screened on this shelf less the 310 rows of the Psalms of Solomon itself, so 30,038, so that no row is counted as matching its own book. Contiguous runs of whole word forms, never lemmas, normalised with the shelf’s cross-corpus comparison (grk_seq_cmp: accents and breathings dropped, final sigma folded, elision resolved, and the New Testament edition’s own spelling equivalences such as ou/ouk/ouch applied to both sides). The tie band — how many units reach the same depth — is printed beside every run, and for the deepest runs it is printed from the other side too: that verse screened against all 30,348 units, this book included. A run of 1 means isolated shared words; 0 means not one shared word. The 8 title rows are screened but left out of the counts below; none reaches three against either corpus.
The distribution, against both corpora:
Against the 7,927 verses of the Greek New Testament: across the 162 verses, 161 reach two, 116 reach three, 27 reach four, 3 reach five, and nothing reaches six. (The one verse that reaches no pair at all is 8:2.)
Against the 30,038 other Greek Old Testament units: all 162 reach two, 151 reach three, 83 reach four, 25 reach five, 4 reach six, and nothing reaches seven.
Depth is not rarity, and rarity is not meaning. 4:17 reaches five with a band of 21 in the Old Testament screen — εἰς τὸν οἶκον αὐτοῦ καὶ, to his house, and, a phrase 22 screened units carry. The two sixes below each have a band of one, from both sides.
The two sixes that hold from both sides:
1. Psalm of Solomon 1:1 → Greek Psalm 119:1 — six words, band 1; and from Greek Psalm 119:1’s side, band 1. πρὸς κύριον ἐν τῷ θλίβεσθαί με, to the Lord when I was in distress. Screened against all 30,348 units, Greek Psalm 119:1 — the first of the Songs of Ascents — reaches six with this row and with nothing else. The six-word sequence stands in exactly two of the 30,348 units, and in none of the 7,927 New Testament verses. Its last four words, ἐν τῷ θλίβεσθαί με, stand in five units: these two, 2 Samuel 22:7, Greek Psalm 17:7 and Psalm of Solomon 15:1.
The first line, twice
Greek: CATSS · English: Gray (1913) and ESV2. Psalm of Solomon 8:10 → Ezekiel 22:11 — six words, band 1; and from Ezekiel’s side, band 1. ἕκαστος τὴν γυναῖκα τοῦ πλησίον αὐτοῦ, each one the wife of his neighbour. Drop the first word and the five-word phrase stands in six units — Ezekiel 18:6, 18:11, 18:15 and 22:11, Jeremiah 5:8, and this row; with ἕκαστος in front, only Ezekiel 22:11 and this row.
The charge sheet, twice
Greek: CATSS · English: Gray (1913); Ezekiel in the page’s own gloss (no ESV Ezekiel is held)And Psalm 8’s other charges, measured against the books a reader might expect:
| book searched | deepest run with any verse of 8:9–22 | where |
|---|---|---|
| Ezekiel | 6 | 8:10 → 22:11, band 1 |
| Jeremiah | 5 | 8:10 → 5:8, τὴν γυναῖκα τοῦ πλησίον αὐτοῦ — from 5:8’s side, band 5 (Ezekiel 18:6, 18:11, 18:15, 22:11 and this row) |
| 1 Maccabees | 3 | 8:13 → 7:23 (ὑπὲρ τὰ ἔθνη); 8:16 → 11:60; 8:19 → 1:40 and 3:45; 8:21 → 5:8 and 5:65 |
| 2 Maccabees | 3 | 8:15 → 7:28 (καὶ τὴν γῆν) |
Beyond 8:10, Ezekiel reaches the psalm twice more: ἐν ἀφέδρῳ stands only in Ezekiel 18:6 and here (Stage 3), and 8:22’s κατὰ τὰς ἀκαθαρσίας αὐτῶν, according to their uncleannesses, reaches four with Ezekiel 39:24, band 1 from the psalm’s side — though from Ezekiel’s side this row is not the nearest (39:24 reaches seven with 39:23 and with Jeremiah 40:5 — Greek numbering; Hebrew and English 33:5). Against 1 and 2 Maccabees, the books that narrate an earlier profanation of the Temple, no verse of 8:9–22 goes beyond three words. Topic is not wording; the table measures wording.
The other two sixes — and why they are weaker:
- 2:16 → Greek Psalm 27:4 — six, band 1 from the psalm-of-Solomon side. κατὰ τὰ ἔργα αὐτῶν καὶ κατὰ, according to their works and according to. From Greek Psalm 27:4’s side the band is 2: Lamentations 3:64 also reaches six with it, on different words (according to the works of their hands).
- 5:2 → Greek Psalms 30:23 and 140:1 — six, band 2. ἐν τῷ κεκραγέναι με πρὸς σὲ, when I cry to you. From either Psalter verse’s side this row is not even the nearest neighbour: 30:23 and 140:1 share nine words with each other.
Five runs of five that hold from both sides — and a five and a four that do not:
- 2:18 → Greek Psalm 7:12, ὁ θεὸς κριτὴς δίκαιος, God is a righteous judge, and the and that follows. Band 1 both ways. 4:21 → Greek Psalm 54:20, καὶ οὐκ ἐφοβήθησαν τὸν θεὸν. Band 1 both ways. 8:25 → Greek Psalm 118:40 and 8:27 → Greek Psalm 47:10, band 1 both ways; 9:2 → 1 Esdras 8:87, σου ἐν ταῖς ἀνομίαις ἡμῶν, band 1 both ways. Four of the five are the Greek Psalter.
- 2:27 → Greek Psalm 78:3 (Psalm 79:3) — five, band 1; from Greek Psalm 78:3’s side, band 2. καὶ οὐκ ἦν ὁ θάπτων, and there was none to bury. From Psalm 78:3’s side two units reach five, by different fives: this row, and 1 Maccabees 7:17, κύκλῳ Ιερουσαλημ καὶ οὐκ ἦν. That is the figure the shelf’s 1 Maccabees 5–8 page published, reproduced unchanged. The shorter ὁ θάπτων stands in five units: Psalm 78:3, 1 Maccabees 7:17, 2 Kings 9:10, Jeremiah 14:16 and this row.
- 8:15 → eight units at four — band 8. ἀπ' ἐσχάτου τῆς γῆς: Deuteronomy 28:49, Isaiah 45:22, and Jeremiah 6:22, 16:19, 27:41, 28:16, 32:32 and 38:8 (Greek numbering). In Deuteronomy 28:49 it is the nation the Lord will bring against Israel; in Isaiah 45:22 those called to turn and be saved; in Jeremiah, variously, invaders from the north, nations coming to the Lord, clouds, a storm and exiles gathered home. The run cannot pick one.
Against the New Testament — every run that reaches five, and the fours worth naming:
Nothing reaches six. The table gives every run of five and the fours a reader might be pointed to, each with its band from both sides.
| Psalm of Solomon | New Testament | run | band from the psalm’s side | band from the NT verse’s side (all 30,348 Greek OT units) | what it is |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3:11 · 7:8 | John 10:28 | 5 | 1 each | 2 — these two rows and nothing else | εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα, καὶ οὐχ — for ever, and not, a seam between two clauses. The fifth word is οὐχ in John, οὐ at 3:11 and οὐκ at 7:8; the ou/ouk/ouch fold in the method note counts them as one word |
| 4:17 | Acts 10:22 | 5 | 1 | 22 — 21 other units carry the same five | εἰς τὸν οἶκον αὐτοῦ καὶ — a stock phrase |
| 2:32 | Revelation 18:23 | 4 | 1 | 3 — the other two on other words | οἱ μεγιστᾶνες τῆς γῆς, the great ones of the earth: in no other screened unit and in no other NT verse |
| 2:36 | 1 Peter 2:3 | 4 | 1 | 2 — Greek Psalm 33:9 and this row | ὅτι χρηστὸς ὁ κύριος — the Psalter’s taste and see that the Lord is good |
| 6:1 | Acts 2:21 · Romans 10:13 | 4 | 2 | 1 each, at 5 and 7, with Joel 3:5 (Greek and Hebrew numbering; English 2:32) | τὸ ὄνομα κυρίου σωθήσεται — the line of Joel both NT verses carry |
| 8:14 | Romans 11:8 | 4 | 1 | 23 | αὐτοῖς ὁ θεὸς πνεῦμα — God … them a spirit; the next word differs |
| 3:10 | Mark 6:29 | 4 | 1 | 1 | τὸ πτῶμα αὐτοῦ καὶ — his fall in the psalm, his corpse in Mark |
| 8:19 | Revelation 21:15 | 4 | 1 | 1 | αὐτῆς καὶ τὸ τεῖχος — her … and the wall |
| 1:1 | 1 Peter 4:16 | 4 | 2 | 1 | τὸν θεὸν ἐν τῷ — God in the |
⚠️ The page’s own counter-examples are in the last three rows. Mark 6:29, Revelation 21:15 and 1 Peter 4:16 each have a Psalm of Solomon row as their one nearest neighbour in the whole screened Greek Old Testament — band 1 from the New Testament side, and for Mark and Revelation from both sides — and every one is four common words. At 3:10 the shared fall is not even the same thing as Mark’s corpse. A band of one says only that no other unit carries these words; it does not say anyone was reading anyone. That is equally true of the two sixes above, which is why the page asserts no use there either.
And a run of five can be a seam. John 10:28’s deepest Greek Old Testament neighbours are Psalm of Solomon 3:11 and 7:8, and only those, because both happen to end one clause with for ever and start the next with and not.
⚠️ Thematic pairs, measured — four words at most:
- 5:9–11 (God feeds birds, fish, kings) → Greek Psalms 103 and 146, Matthew 6:26 — two at most. 5:9 against Greek Psalm 103:12 and against Matthew 6:26: two (the birds); against Greek Psalm 146:9: one. 5:10 against Greek Psalm 103:27: two (to you). 5:11 against Luke 12:24: two (God with its article). 5:9’s deepest Greek Old Testament run is three words, shared with three units, one of them Greek Psalm 8:9, καὶ τοὺς ἰχθύας, and the fish — band 3; Exodus 16:8 and 30:15 tie on other words, ἐν τῷ διδόναι, in the giving. From Greek Psalm 8:9’s side this row is not among its nearest (it reaches five with ten other units).
- 9:4 (our works in the choice and power of our soul) → Sirach 15:11–20 — one at most. Against 15:14–17, Sirach’s passage on human choice, one shared word each, and 15:11–12 share none. The one Sirach 15 verse that reaches five with Psalms 1–9 is 15:19, and it is about eyes: 4:12’s καὶ οἱ ὀφθαλμοὶ αὐτοῦ ἐπ' (band 1 from the psalm’s side, 3 from Sirach’s). 9:4’s own deepest run is καὶ ἐν τῇ δικαιοσύνῃ σου, five words, with Greek Psalm 88:17 (band 1 from 9:4’s side; from the Psalter verse’s side, band 5).
- 9:6 → 1 Corinthians 13:4 — zero. The only two homes of χρηστεύομαι share no word.
- 4:19 → Greek Psalm 52:6 — one. The only other men-pleasers in the Greek Old Testament, and the word itself is all they share.
- 3:12 → Daniel 12:2 — three (Old Greek) and four (Theodotion). εἰς ζωὴν αἰώνιον stands in both Greek Daniels and here; the Old Greek has ἀναστήσονται two words earlier, with οἱ μὲν between. A gap of two words is enough to keep a run at three.
- 6:6 → 1 Corinthians 2:9 — three (band 4 from the psalm’s side; from 1 Corinthians 2:9’s side its deepest Greek Old Testament run is three, band 11). τοῖς ἀγαπῶσιν αὐτὸν, to those who love him, stands in five Greek Old Testament units — Deuteronomy 7:9, 2 Esdras 11:5 (Greek Ezra–Nehemiah; Nehemiah 1:5), Sirach 1:10 and Psalms of Solomon 6:6 and 14:1 — and in 1 Corinthians 2:9 and James 1:12 and 2:5. The five Greek Old Testament homes are the ones the shelf’s 1 Corinthians 1–4 page prints. That page gives 2:9’s band as ten: it was measured without the ou/ouk fold this page applies, and the eleventh unit here, Ecclesiastes 6:5, ties only on οὐκ εἶδεν καὶ, ‘did not see, and’.
It settles the narrow thing. On this corpus and this screen, the deepest verbatim contacts of Psalms of Solomon 1–9 are with the Greek Old Testament, not the New: two six-word sequences, the first line with the first Song of Ascents and Psalm 8’s adultery charge with Ezekiel 22:11, each standing in exactly two of the 30,348 units screened. Against the New Testament the ceiling is five, and the fives are a stock phrase and a clause seam.
It does not settle influence in any direction. A screen for verbatim runs cannot see allusion, cannot see a shared liturgical habit, and cannot see the Hebrew that Gray believed lay behind the Greek. The Greek column is also an edited text: at 2:4, 2:19 and 9:6–7 Gray’s notes say the reading it prints is a conjecture (Stage 5), and a run through a conjecture measures an editor.
What was checked, what could not be, and where the page is weakest.
This is the section that makes the shelf trustworthy. For a book with no Hebrew, no canonical English and an edited Greek, more than usual could not be checked.
⚠️ The Greek column carries editors’ conjectures — three that Gray names:
- 2:4. “Hilgenfeld conjectured εὐδοκῶ ἐν αὐτοῖς for εὐόδωκεν (R J L: εὐώδωκεν H) αὐτοῖς; and this is adopted by von Gebhardt” (Gray, note on II. 4, 5, p. 632) The CATSS row reads οὐκ εὐδοκῶ ἐν αὐτοῖς.
- 2:19. Gray’s note: “MSS. of G ‘he dragged down’; but S has a passive verb and, so far, supports as the true Greek reading von Gebhardt’s conjecture, κατεσπάσθη for κατέσπασεν (R), κατέσπασε (J L H).” (Gray, note on II. 20, p. 633) The CATSS row reads κατεσπάσθη.
- 9:6–7. “Von Gebhardt conjecturally restores the 2nd person in vv. 12 and 14.” (Gray, note on IX. 11, p. 642) (Gray’s verses 12 and 14 are CATSS 9:6 and 9:7.) The CATSS rows read καθαριεῖς and ἀφήσεις, second person; Gray’s English has He cleanseth and doth He forgive.
- These three were found by reading Gray’s notes on the verses this page prints. The rest of the CATSS text was not checked against any apparatus, because none is held. No run of two words or more reported on this page passes through any of the three, but a reader citing the CATSS wording of these psalms should know that some of it is an editor’s.
⚠️ What this page could NOT check:
- The Hebrew. None survives; Gray: “It may be regarded as practically certain (see below, § 4) that the Psalms were originally written in Hebrew: but this Hebrew original has perished and no testimony to it even survives.” (Gray, Introduction §1, p. 625) Every Hebrew-side screen on this shelf is therefore impossible here, and nothing on this page is a claim about a Hebrew original.
- The Syriac. Gray’s notes cite it constantly; it is not held, and his English sometimes follows it (2:22 above).
- The date and the Pompey reading. Reported as Gray’s, with his pages. Not measured, and not measurable from these files.
- Josephus. The Antiquities held (Niese’s Greek), the War not held; neither measured for this page.
- Every reference work and commentary named in Stage 1 except Gray. None was consulted.
- Allusion. The run engine finds verbatim contact only. A run of one is not proof of independence, and a run of six is not proof of use.
⚠️ Where this page is weakest:
- The English is a 1913 translation with its own text-critical choices. Gray leaves gaps where the CATSS Greek is whole (1:6, the dotted line at 2:4, 4:9 and 5:13), departs from the Greek on the strength of a conjectured Hebrew (8:3, 2:25), and follows one manuscript and the Syriac against the rest (2:22). The page prints his English verbatim and flags the departures it found in the verses it discusses; it did not audit the rest of the 162.
- Three numbering systems. The page cites CATSS; Gray’s bold numbers are given where they differ. A figure taken from this page into a book that uses Ryle & James’s numbers will be off by up to nine verses (Psalm 9).
- The sinner count is a lemma count, taken from the CATSS lemma column. It counts the word, not the idea: Psalm 8 lists Jerusalem’s sins for five verses (8:9–13) and uses ἁμαρτία, sin, at 8:8 and 8:13.
- The structure diagram claims only what it counts — Jerusalem in Psalms 2 and 8, the war-word, the sinner-word — and is expressly not offered as a chiasm.
Commentaries & studies:
- G. Buchanan Gray, in Charles, APOT II (1913), pp. 625–652 — held and quoted.
- H. E. Ryle and M. R. James (1891) — the bold numbering; OCR held, not read for this page.
- Oscar von Gebhardt (1895) — the Greek text Gray discusses; not held.
- Robert B. Wright (2007) and Kenneth Atkinson, I Cried to the Lord (2004) — not held, not consulted.
A cry in distress, a voice that thought itself righteous, and what a measurement can and cannot say.
Name what you learned, why it matters, and one concrete response.
What should we carry away — and do?
- The book opens where the Songs of Ascents open. To the Lord, when I was in distress — six words that, of everything held here, only the first Song of Ascents and this first line carry. The measurement can say that; it cannot say why.
- The voice that thought itself righteous. Psalm 1’s speaker says twice, I was full of righteousness, and at 1:3 ties it to prosperity, and then finds out that their sins — the unnamed they of 1:4–8 — were hidden. The Greek names no city here; Gray read they as Zion’s children: “The fame of the wealth and glory of the Jews, the children (v. 3) of Zion, passed from mouth to mouth till it filled the whole world.” (Gray, note on I. 4, p. 631) Scripture says the same about self-assessment (Proverbs 16:2; 1 Corinthians 4:4).
- Who is called a sinner. In Psalm 2 the word names the conqueror at the walls (2:1) and the plural sinners of 2:16, whom that verse does not further identify; in Psalm 8, which lays out Jerusalem’s sins at length, it does not occur. The page counts the word and does not explain the silence.
- Measure before you repeat. The thematic pairs measured here — God feeding the birds with Matthew 6:26, free will with Sirach 15 — measure two words at most. A pair this page did not expect, Psalm 8 with Ezekiel 22:11, measures six.
- One concrete response. Psalm 120 is the first Song of Ascents. Pray it this week, in your own distress — “In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me.” (ESV) — and read it as Scripture, which the Psalms of Solomon are not.
Psalms of Solomon 1:1 · to share
Greek: CATSS · English: Gray (1913)Every Deep Research page traces its passage across the whole sweep — the Old Testament, the Second-Temple world between the testaments (historical witnesses, not Scripture), and the New Testament. Follow the thread:
Pleasant Springs Church — Deep Research
Research method after Michael S. Heiser’s Bible Research Method (examine dictionaries → ancient literature → important words → textual connections → academic publications → share), with the Pleasant Springs “Author & Audience” foundation. Scripture set in the Hebrew, the Greek editions named on each page and the ESV (Old Testament), and the Greek New Testament and the ESV (New Testament), per the practice of Pleasant Springs Church. ⚠️ Status: the Psalms of Solomon are not Scripture for Pleasant Springs and not deuterocanonical; they are filed under Pseudepigrapha & Second Temple and read as a witness. Greek: the CATSS morphologically analysed Septuagint (Rahlfs’s text), file PsSol.mlxx, quoted at verse level with attribution; lemma counts from its lemma column. English: G. Buchanan Gray, “The Psalms of Solomon”, in R. H. Charles (ed.), The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English, vol. II (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913), pp. 625–652, public domain; transcription base Wesley Center Online, reconciled line by line to the 1913 print, and quoted verbatim. Gray’s notes are quoted only as read off the page images of the University of Toronto copy (Internet Archive). Greek New Testament: SBLGNT via MorphGNT. ESV is printed for Psalm 120:1 only; Ezekiel is in the page’s own gloss. No Hebrew text of this book exists to print. Direction of influence is nowhere asserted.
Scripture quotations marked ESV are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. ESV Text Edition: 2016. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license, and the ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language. www.esv.org
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