Chapter Two. Solomon and Jesus—Two Sons of God, and of David?

Abstract

Solomon’s presence in the polemic regarding Jesus’ divinity as the Son of God can be traced to a single act of rhetoric in the Epistle to the Hebrews. The authorship of that text, which dates to the second century, was attributed to Paul152 first by Eastern and later by Western Christianity, and this remained a commonly accepted view until the Reformation.153 Some of the Church Fathers addressed the stylistic disparities between that epistle and others attributed to Paul with the explanation that he had composed the former in Hebrew rather than in Greek, or that Paul strove to conceal his authorship for reasons of modesty.154 The fact that many citations from the Bible are found throughout Hebrews has given rise to various hypotheses regarding the identity of its audience, which I