1 Kings 11:41
The lost Book of the Acts of Solomon
Kings tells readers to look for "the rest of the acts of Solomon" in "the book of the acts of Solomon." The wording is stable across the witnesses checked. The book itself is lost; no copy, fragment or outside quotation is known.
Stable text: no manuscript differences in meaning
The family tree
Each row is a language or text tradition. Witnesses in the same row may share ancestry, revise one another, or have an uncertain relationship; the line under each box says which. A solid arrow appears only where direct copying or a documented revised edition is established. Order by date never implies copying. Scroll sideways on a phone.
✓ contains this verse · ▢ pages lost · – no copy survives
- Same line, through lost copies
- Translation
Every witness, in order
Unknown; before Kings
Book of the Acts of Solomon
Cited only here. Its contents and date are unknown.
Unknown (debated)
Original Kings
No original survives.
Translated c. 2nd century BC
Septuagint, 3 Kingdoms (library text: Giguet's French)
How the site knows this: Known here only through a translation.
The library's Greek has this notice in a reordered chapter 11 (verse numbers in parentheses). One Greek text (Vaticanus type) via Giguet's French; not checked against a critical Greek edition.
c. AD 400
Jerome's Vulgate
How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: Clementine Vulgate (1592 edition).
in libro verborum dierum Salomonis
"In the book of the words of the days of Solomon."
AD 1008
Masoretic Text (Leningrad Codex)
How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: Westminster Leningrad Codex, a digital transcription of the Leningrad Codex.
עַל־סֵפֶר דִּבְרֵי שְׁלֹמֹה
in the book of the acts (words) of Solomon
1611
King James Bible
How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: King James Version (1769 text).
in the book of the acts of Solomon
What changed, and why
Kings also cites "the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel" and "of Judah." These may have been court annals. The site will never present reconstructed text as if it came from them.
What the evidence shows
- Kings cites a Book of the Acts of Solomon.
- Any part of it survives.
Sources
Related lessons
- Solomon's Downfall →Solomon loves many foreign women; in his old age his wives turn his heart to other gods, and he builds high places for Chemosh and Molech. God declares that the kingdom will be torn from his son, leaving one tribe for David's sake. Adversaries rise: Hadad of Edom, Rezon of Damascus, and Jeroboam, to whom the prophet Ahijah gives ten pieces of a torn cloak. Jeroboam flees to Shishak in Egypt. Solomon dies after forty years.
- How 1 Kings Came to Us →1 Kings is the first half of the Hebrew book of Kings, one of the Former Prophets. It names its sources: the Book of the Acts of Solomon and the chronicles of the kings of Israel and Judah, none of which survive. Kings was edited as part of a history from Joshua to Kings. Three Qumran scrolls preserve fragments. The Greek 3 Kingdoms is unusually different: material moved, expanded and, in places, told twice.