The Psalms of Solomon are neither quoted nor referred to explicitly by any of the Fathers. The earliest mention of them is in the catalogue of contents in the Codex Alexandrinus of the Bible in the British Library (5th cent.) where 'eighteen Psalms of Solomon' are listed right at the end, after the two Epistles of Clement, which in turn follow the 'Apocalypse of John'. Presumably Alexandrinus contained a text of the Psalms, but it does so no longer: its last leaves have been lost, and the text breaks off rather more than half-way through 2 Clement. Later on, the Psalms occur in the List of Sixty Books, as also in the pseudo-Athanasian Synopsis and the Stichometry of Nicephorus. In the last two, however, they are joined together with the Odes -- 'Psalms and Ode(s) of Solomon'. They are not mentioned in the Gelasian Decree.
The text of the Psalms is preserved in some ten Greek manuscripts (two of them defective), one Greek fragment (consisting of xvii. 2-xviii. 14),1 and also in two defective Syriac manuscripts and two Syriac fragments (both, oddly enough, containing xvi. 6-13). The Greek MSS date from the late 10th or early 11th cent. to the early 15th, and in all of them the Psalms appear as one among a number of other works, some Biblical and some ecclesiastical. In the two Syriac MSS, however, the Psalms are preceded by the Odes, but there is no distinction between them: the Psalms follow immediately on the Odes without a break: all are given the title 'Psalms'; and they are numbered consecutively from the beginning of the Odes -- thus, Psalm i in our numeration becomes Psalm xliii in the Syriac, and so on up to lx. Neither Syriac MS contains any other work. One of them (Rylands Cod. Syr. 9; 16th cent.) is deficient at the beginning of the Odes and also from Ps. xvii. 38 to the end: the other (B.L. Addit. 14538; 9th or 10th
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