Attestation

The Odes of Solomon were probably composed in Syriac, and most of them survive only in two Syriac manuscripts. The first two odes and the beginning of the third do not survive in either Syriac manuscript. A few portions in Greek, Latin, and Coptic also survive:

• A Greek version of Ode 11 is found Bodmer Papyrus XI.

• Five odes translated into Coptic, including the otherwise-unattested Ode 1, are quoted in Pistis Sophia, a gnostic text.

• The Christian author Lactantius cited Ode 19.6–7 in Latin in a work dated to the early fourth century (Lactantius, Inst. 4.12).

Two lists of canonical and noncanonical books, the sixth-century Synopsis Sacrae Scripturae and the ninth-century (or possibly earlier) Stichometry of Nicephorus, both include “Psalms and Odes of Solomon” as disputed or noncanonical, along with the book of Esther and several of the books now known as Apocrypha, such as the books of Maccabees (Bernhard, Odes of Solomon, 11–12). These lists group together the Jewish Psalms of Solomon and the Christian Odes of Solomon.

The text does not present Solomon as its author; the Odes were already attributed to him when they were quoted by Lactantius and the author of Pistis Sophia, but it is unclear how this attribution came about.