41 verse texts are extant of the original 42 poems (also described as hymns, psalms or songs) which comprise the so-called Odes of Solomon—a corpus not to be confused with the 18 so-called Psalms of Solomon. As can be seen from the Appendix, the history of the discovery and publication of these poems began with C.G. Woide at the end of the eighteenth century.1 Up to that time the only evidence for the Odes of Solomon was twofold. On the one hand, there was an enigmatic Latin quotation of three lines (i.e. 19:6-7a) in the Divinae Institutiones of Lactantius (c.240-c.320). On the other hand, the mere title was listed together with the better known in the so-called of Ps.-Athanasios and the ascribed to Nikephoros Patriarch of Konstantinopolis (c.750-828). In these two canon-lists Psalms and Odes appear in this order among the Old Testament's ‘antilegomena’ which is a category between ‘canonical’ and ‘apocryphal’.