Both king Solomon and the reader are confronted with some kind of a juridical-detective riddle. Scholars have pointed out that the story resembles the modern detective story genre. Edward Lipinski suggests that the story is an example of "king's bench tales", a subgenre of the wisdom literature to which he finds parallels in Sumerian literature. Several suggestions for the genre of the biblical story have been raised beyond its characterization as a folktale of a known type. Some think that the fresco relates directly to the biblical story, while according to others it represents a parallel tradition. A fresco found in the "House of the Physician" in Pompeii depicts pygmies introducing a scene similar to the biblical story. The writer ascribes the story to Phliliskos of Miletos, living in the fourth century BC. A Greek papyrus fragment, dating from the beginning of the second century AD, includes a fragmented reference to an ancient legal case which is similar to the judgment of Solomon. There is indirect evidence that the story was also widespread in ancient times in the western world. But the procedure is actually a concealed emotional test, designed to force each woman to decide between her compassion for the baby and her will to win. The common motif in those parallel versions is that the wise judge announces an absurd procedure, which is reasonable in some perverse way: splitting the baby, according to the principle of compromise or a tug of war, in which one can possibly presume that the true mother will be motivated to pull harder. The Judgement of Solomon by Gaspar de Crayer, c. Another version appears in the Chinese drama The Chalk Circle (in which version the judge draws a circle on the ground), which has spread worldwide, many versions and reworkings being made, among them The Caucasian Chalk Circle, a play by Bertolt Brecht. In other Indian versions, the two women are widows of one husband. When the sage saw that, he returned the baby to the hands of the true mother, exposed the identity of the Yakshini and expelled her. The mother, seeing how the baby suffered, released him and, weeping, let the Yakshini take him. The sage announced a tug of war, drawing a line on the ground and asking the two to stand on opposite sides of it, one holding the baby's feet, the other his hands – the one who pulled the baby's whole body beyond the line would get to keep him. One Indian version is a Jataka story dealing with Buddha in one of his previous incarnations as the sage Mahosadha, who arbitrates between a mother and a Yakshini who is in the shape of a woman, who kidnapped the mother's baby and claimed he was hers. Hugo Gressmann has found several similar stories in world folklore and literature, especially in India and the far east. The novella emphasizes such human traits as cleverness, eroticism, loyalty, and wiliness, that drive the plot forward more than any other element". Eli Yassif defines the folk novella as "a realistic story whose time and place are determined . In Uther's edition of the Aarne-Thompson index, this tale type is classified as a folk novella, and belongs to a subgroup designated "Clever Acts and Words". The story is classified as Aarne-Thompson tale type 926, and many parallel stories have been found in world folklore. Its folkloristic nature is apparent, among other things, in the dominance of direct speech which moves the plot on and contributes to the characterization. The story is commonly viewed in scholarship as an instance or a reworking of a folktale. This judgment became known throughout all of Israel and was considered an example of profound wisdom. The king declared the second woman the true mother, as a mother would even give up her baby if that was necessary to save its life, and awarded her custody. One mother did not contest the ruling, declaring that if she could not have the baby then neither of them could, but the other begged Solomon, "Give the baby to her, just don't kill him!" Calling for a sword, Solomon declared his judgment: the baby would be cut in two, each woman to receive half. One of the babies had been smothered, and each claimed the remaining boy as her own. The Judgement of Solomon (School of Giorgione, 1500)ġ Kings 3:16–28 recounts that two mothers living in the same house, each the mother of an infant son, came to Solomon.
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