The Odes of Solomon are a collection of forty-two early Christian hymns, probably composed in the late first or second century. Their original language, authorship, and precise community remain uncertain, but their imagery is remarkably rich: light, living water, anointing, the Spirit, the bridegroom, rebirth, and the indwelling life of Christ. They belong to the wide and still-fluid devotional world of early Christianity rather than to one securely defined school.
The Odes matter because they preserve a lyrical form of Christian mysticism near the apostolic age. For the Royal Art, they provide a devotional counterpoint to philosophical and Gnostic cosmology: the return to God is sung as praise, anointing, illumination, and the awakening of life within the heart.