The Testament of Solomon in early twentieth-century demonology studies

Record summary

The Testament of Solomon presents a legendary king who interrogates demons with assistance from an angelic intermediary and receives knowledge about their identities and powers. Early twentieth-century scholarship and occult publishing kept this text available as a source for classifications of intermediary beings. It is useful for comparison with later maritime or polar narratives that organize anomalous entities into named hierarchies. The work is pseudepigraphal, composite and textually unstable; it should be cited through a specific edition rather than treated as a historical transcript of Solomon’s encounters.