Psalms and Odes of Solomon

These are voices the canon left behind. The Psalms of Solomon (18 psalms, probably composed in Hebrew around 63 BCE) emerge from the chaos of Rome's conquest of Jerusalem, written by Jews who watched their world crack apart under Pompey's siege. They are explicitly anti-Maccabee, seeing the Hasmonean dynasty's corruption as the reason God sent the Roman 'dragon' to punish Jerusalem. The text was lost to history until a Greek manuscript surfaced in the 17th century. The Odes of Solomon (42 poems, likely composed in Greek or Syriac during the first three centuries AD) are something different: ecstatic early Christian hymns, perhaps the oldest collection of Christian poetry in existence, sung by communities for whom the resurrection was not doctrine but lived experience. Together, these texts offer something rare: access to the prayers, rages, and spiritual transports of ancient Jews and Christians who stood outside the boundaries of what would become scripture.