Intertextual Study of the Psalms of Solomon Pseudepigrapha

This is the first English study of the Psalms of Solomon in over a century. They were composed between 63-37 BCE as a series of reflections on the violence that accompanied the Roman dominance of Palestine. Faced with overwhelming foreign aggression, this unknown Jerusalem synagogue community used poetry as a vehicle to oppose the Romans and their Jewish allies. With the emergence of Herod the Great, this sect changed its theology, and used scripture to fashion a militant Davidic messiah, who was envisaged as a righteous counterpart to the Jewish and Roman rulers he was to destroy.