King Solomon
Article
King Solomon is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between May 24, 2021 and February 21, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as “Other genies have been trapped in jars by King Solomon”; “moral decline of King Solomon”; “Polygamy was legal in Judaism during Biblical times (eg King Solomon and his seven hundred wives)“. It most often appears alongside China, Christianity, facebook.
Metadata
- Category: People
- Mention count: 3
- Issue count: 3
- First seen: May 24, 2021
- Last seen: February 21, 2024
Appears In
- Book Review: Arabian Nights
- Universe-Hopping Through Substack
- Highlights From The Comments On Polyamory
Related Pages
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- China (2 shared issues)
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- Christianity (2 shared issues)
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- facebook (2 shared issues)
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- 1 Kings 10-11 (1 shared issues)
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- 2008 Democratic National Convention (1 shared issues)
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- 2017 SSC survey (1 shared issues)
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- A Woman First: First Woman: A Memoir (1 shared issues)
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- Abbasid Caliphate (1 shared issues)
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- Adam Scheffer (1 shared issues)
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- Adam Schefter (1 shared issues)
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- Aella (1 shared issues)
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- Airbnb (1 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
Genies: These are everywhere, so much so that barren islands are sometimes described as "inhabited neither by men nor genies". Most genies are free and want to kill you, though if you're protagonisty enough they might be convinced to give you a break. Other genies have been trapped in jars by King Solomon. Supposedly if you let them out they grant you wishes, but this seems to be a spontaneous expression of gratitude rather than an obligation. In The Fisherman's Tale, one genie was angry about being trapped too long, and decided to kill whoever let him out instead. Still other genies have been bound to lamps or rings by sorcerers, and are under the command of whoever owns the lamp or ring.
I feel like this is weak. If I were doing this, I’d point out that 1 Kings 10-11 describes the moral decline of King Solomon. His main offenses are overtaxing the people, taking too many heathen women into his harem, and overspending on luxuries - including monkeys from far-off Tarshish. God gets angry at all of this and curses him to have his kingdom fall in the next generation. Surely monkeys + sexual profligacy = curse, plus the impending fall of the kingdom, forms a better “monkeypox means the End Times” argument than the “zoonotic disease” drivel. Also, Solomon’s excessive taxes come out to exactly 666 talents of gold - coincidence? But also: the Hebrew letter qoph means “monkey” - both symbolically, in the sense that its glyph is supposed to represent a monkey with a tail, and literally, in the sense that the word “qoph” also means “monkey” in Hebrew. According to kabbalah, it is the letter of impurity and unholiness. Its gematria value is 100, representing the 100 people killed by plague every day due to David offending God. But qoph is also the first letter of the Hebrew word keitz, meaning the end of time! I really feel like you could make a much stronger case here!
Inline links: means “monkey”, According to kabbalah
Funny story! Polygamy was legal in Judaism during Biblical times (eg King Solomon and his seven hundred wives). The Talmud is vague about the practice, but mostly seems to treat it as undesirable but not forbidden. It only became fully illegal in Judaism around 1000 AD, when Rabbi Gershom ben Judah banned it for all Jews under his authority (approximately all European Jews, but non-European Jews gradually adopted his position too). Rabbi Gershom said his ban would expire at the end of “the thousand”, which has been interpreted variously as the end of the Jewish millennium (1240 AD) or the end of a thousand years (2000 AD).