Page:Testament of Solomon.djvu/6

6 Satan fallen from heaven"remove mountains."

Again, on p. 124 of Fleck, the demon says So Mark ix. 18 it is said of the that whenever it seized the boy,. Are we to regard the author of the Testament as here imitating the Greek Testament? Similarly on p. 136 we have the passage: Here we have an Aramaism which is very common in Luke, and which occurs, though seldom, in Matthew and Mark as well. There is really no reason for supposing any of these phrases to be imitated from the New Testament. It is quite as probable that the writer of the document was a Hellenistic Jew, who naturally employed the same phraseology and idioms as the writers of the New Testament. He has not the air of imitating another document; and if he were writing with the Gospels before him as a model, he would surely imitate them in a more unmistakable manner.

Even the phrase (§ 72), in spite of its recurrence in Paul (Eph. vi. 12), cannot be regarded as imported from Paul into the Testament. For Paul merely glances at a system of belief which the Testament sets before us in lengthy detail. Celsus, in his book against the Christian religion, written about 170, and subsequently controverted by Origen, gave an account of the thirty-six world-ruling decani identical with that of the Testament in all respects but one, namely, that he used the Coptic or Egyptian names of the decani, whereas the Testament has mock Hebrew ones. The following passage from an old Latin writer exhibits the same belief; and in it, as in the Testament, the supernatural powers are