Shelomoh (Solomon)

שלמו


As we have seen previously, the root Shalom (or possibly Salm) appears time and again in Beney Yisra-El names, of kings and priests and prophets mostly, but also in the city of Shalem, one of the seven hilltop villages which eventually became the conurbation Yeru-Shala'im.

Biblical Salma was originally a tribe of Southern Yehudah, nomadic but associated primarily with the city of Aza (Gaza). The name however has links beyond Yehudah - for example Salamis, both the Phoenician colony on the east coast of Kaprisin (Cyprus), and the Greek island of the same name. Salma was also a royal title among the Keynim (Kenites), who were ancestors of King David. The Phoenicians called him Selim, the Ashurim (Assyrians) Salman, the Danaans and Minoan Cretans Salmoneus, and we know him through these as Shalman-Eser (שַׁלְמַנְאֶ֖סֶר), the Assyrian king who took away the ten tribes (2 Kings 17:3). Suleiman, the Ethiopic king, is still another variant, as are the Suleimans who ruled the Ottoman Empire.

Av-Shalom(אבשלום - Absalom) was probably Talmai ben Amihud, king of Geshur (we have seen many times that Aramaic Tav - ת - becomes Yehudit Sheen - ש), and the Greco-Egyptian Ptolemy seems to derive from the same root. But in this case it is even more certain, because David married Ma'achah (2 Samuel 3:3) the daughter of the first King Talmai of Geshur, and Av-Shalom ("my father is Talmai?) was the progeny.

Salma as a tribal name probably originated as that of an eponymous deity - again, presumably, the deity of pre-Jerusalem. The Tel Amarna letters call that city Uru-Salim, and in Assyrian monuments it is mentioned as Ur-Salimu. Josephus calls Salma Solyma. Other classical writers also mention the Aegean goddess Salmaone and the Aeolian Salmoneus.

Salma, according to 1 Chronicles 2:11, was the mother of Bo'az, though Matthew 1:5, following Ruth 4:20, claims that it was Salmon who was Bo'az's father, adding that Salmon's mother was Rahab, who we know as the Kena'ani (Canaanite) sea god and also as Rachav, the priestess of Yericho (Jericho). The Rut (Ruth)-Bo'az connection is crucial in this, because Bo'az married Rut (רוּת) and great-grandparented King David with her, the ruler of the city that would bear the name Yeru-Shala'im, where one of his sons bearing the Salm name (Av-Shalom) briefly ruled, where a second son bearing the Salm name (Shelomoh - Solomon) also ruled, and where Bo'az himself became one of the two pillars at the gateway to the Solomonic Temple (1 Kings 7:21), the other being Yachin (יָכִין). Nor should we forget that King Herod, who also ruled Yeru-Shala'im, fell in love with a beautiful priestess named Salome - or, in the Christian versions, it was his son Herod Antipas, and he was simply very fond of his step-daughter.

King Shelomoh's (Solomon's) birth-name was, like his father King David, Yedid-Yah (2 Samuel 12:25), which means "the beloved of the goddess Yah", but he took the god-name upon his succession to the throne. He is accredited with writing the Song of Songs, but this is false. Songs, or Canticles, is a collection of village love-songs, originally written to celebrate the mysteries of an annual sacred marriage between Salma'ah the king of the year and the flower queen, whose name by no coincidence is Shulamit (שולמית) - it is worth noting that Eusebius and others render the town of Shunem as Shulam, from which we can read King David's last concubine, Avi-Shag the Shunemite, as yet another variant upon the same name. The version left to us is very Hellenistic, and almost certainly not the original. The lilies of the valley which are its predominant flower motif are the red anemones which spring up like poppies in the Judean spring, and which mythologically marked the place where Adonis fell, wounded by a boar.

Shelomoh seems to have built three separate structures, or possibly a single Temple complex, but one that had three distinct parts (1 Kings 7:1), the second his palace, known as the House of the Forest of Lebanon, the third the house of Pharaoh's daughter which the archaeologist David Rolf believes he has now discovered. Graves argues that Shelomoh's priestly role would have required the palace to function as an annex to the Temple, even as a shrine in itself, as the king could not sit in judgement (1 Kings 7:7) without the presence of validating priests; he speculates from the name that the shrine would have been to the Lebanese mountain-goddess, protectress of the cedar trees that were acquired for its building, the love and battle goddess of midsummer known both as Astarte and Anatha (this is Graves' rendition, taken from his background in the Greek world; Biblically she was Anat); the Temple itself was dedicated both to YHVH and to the birth-goddess of the winter solstice who in the Mosheh version of this myth was called Mir-Yam (Miriam), and in the Jesus version Mary or Martha - all three variants of the same name, as is Moriah, Mor-Yah, where Shelomoh built the temples.

Graves' speculations are often precisely that - speculations; but his grounding in scholarship is unequalled, and so he cannot be ignored or dismissed. And usually there is something substantial to be drawn. On this occasion the substance comes from his great skill in making mythological connections. He points out that, in the Celtic "Cad Goddeu", Annwm is the Underworld, whose king was Arawn; and Araunah, or Ornah, was the name of the threshing-floor purchased by King David as the site of the Temple (2 Samuel 24:18); David's Underworld of course was She'ol (שְׁאוֹל), which unpointed is Sha'ul (שָׁאוּל), or King Saul. Graves draws some interesting links between this and Shelomoh in "The White Goddess", including noting that Taliesin, the central character of that myth, is also called Teilmon, which may well be another Salm variant - the Sheen and Tav variations once again. If you find it surprising that there are such strong links between a Yisra-Eli and a Celtic text from Wales, take a look at "The Leprachauns of Palestine" elsewhere on this blog.

Leviticus 11:19 lists the tabooed birds as: lapwing, eagle, griffon-vulture, ibis, cuckoo, swan, kite, raven, owl, goose, stork, heron and pelican. Most of these must have been of non-Semitic origin, since they are not actually from the region. The Qur'an (Surah 27), on the other hand, describes the lapwing as "the repository of King Solomon's secrets", and has a prophetic bird attending him – i.e. a totem-priest. Given that Yeru-Shala'im is also the third most holy site of Islam, we can assume a deeper link to the place than the legend of Muhammad's night-journey or "Isra", and the mere folk legend that has his horse tripping as it bore the Prophet into Heaven, and his dead body being gathered up by angels even before his feet had lost their stirrups. Moslems to this day point out the hoofprint on the black rock that forms the volcanic peak of Mount Mor-Yah, underneath the Shrine of Omar. The same rock is held by Jews to have been the place of the non-sacrifice of Yitschak (Isaac), as it had for centuries been the place of sacrifice of the Beney Shalem Moloch-worshippers. All this helps identify Shelomoh as the priest-king of a sun-god, where David was just as clearly the priest-king of a moon-god.

Among the other Biblical characters who bear the name are:

Shilem (שלם) a son of Naphtali in Genesis 46:24, also known as Shalum (שלום) in 1 Chronicles 7:13, and tribally as the Beney Shilem or Shileymi (שלמי) in Numbers 26:49.

Several Shalums are in fact recorded. The first was a king of Yisra-El in 773/2 BCE (2 Kings 15:10). There may also be a king of Yehudah named Shalum, a son of King Yoshi-Yahu (יֹאשִׁיָּהוּ - Josiah), who Yirme-Yahu tells us (Jeremiah 22:11) took the throne when Yoshi-Yahu was killed at the battle of Megiddo by Pharaoh Nechoh II (נְכֹה) of Mitsrayim. However 2 Kings 23:30 states that the son who succeeded Yoshi-Yahu was named Yeho'achaz (יְהוֹאָחָז ), or probably Yahu-Achaz - though 2 Kings 13:1 thinks that this was the name of an earlier king, the son of Yehu (יֵהוּא) - and perhaps there were two. The third was the husband of Chuldah the prophetess in 2 Kings 22:14. Various other men bearing the name appear in Ezra 2:42, 7:2, 10:24 and 10:42; Nehemiah 3:12 and 7:45; 1 Chronicles 2:40 et al.

Shalmai (שלמי) appears in Ezra 2:46.

Shelomi (שלמי) in Numbers 34:27.

Shelumi-El (שלמיאל) in Numbers 1:6 and 2:12.

Shelem-Yahu (שלמיהו) appears in 1 Chronicles 26:14. This, and Shelumi-El above, are clearly an attempt to equate one god with another, which we see so often in the Rabbinical redaction - when they could find no other way of expurgating a heterodox divinity or deity, they appended to it the name of the orthodox one, as if to say, on this occasion "Shalem is Yahu". But Yahu was a late masculinisation of Yah, the moon-goddess, so what we actually have is a double-redaction, with Shalem the sun-god becoming associated with YHVH the sun-god, just as in Shelumi-El the association is with El as sun-god.

Shelomit (שלמית) in Leviticus 24:11 and 1 Chronicles 23:9.

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