Solomon and Sheba and Bob Marley and the United Nations /Salomón y Saba y Bob Marley y las Naciones Unidas

This space reserved to write about Bob Marley and his song One Heart. You can hear it here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hynjdhRzLq0

Bob was bullied when he was a kid both by black and white people because of his parents. This was his answer:

Este espacio reservado para escribir sobre Bob Marley y Un Corazón.
Bob fue acosado cuando era niño tanto por blancos como por negros por ser hijo de sus padres.
Esta fue su respuesta:

"My father was a white and my mother was black. Them call me half-caste or whatever. Me don´t dip on nobody´s side. Me don´t dip on the black man´s side nor the white man´s side. Me dip on God´s side, the one who create me and cause me to come from black and white."

"Mi padre era un blanco y mi madre era negra. Ellos me llaman mestizo o lo que sea. Yo no estoy del lado de nadie. Yo no estoy del lado del hombre negro ni del lado del hombre blanco. Yo estoy del lado de Dios, que me creó e hizo que saliese de lo blanco y lo negro."

We are going to learn about Reggae, the Rastafari Movement, the Bete Israel and Solomon and Sheba. Yes, they have things in common.

Vamos a aprender sobre el reggae, el movimiento Rastafari, y Salomón y la reina de Saba. Sí, tienen cosas en común.

It all started with King Solomon, who was the wisest king the Jews ever had. He was very tolerant because like the wise person he was, he knew it was better to cooperate and live happily than to get into fights in which everyone gets hurt and loses a lot, either in exchange of nothing, or in exchange of things that don´t really last. During his reign, since people were fighting less, they had more time to work on being prosperous and cultured.

Almost everybody knows the story about King Solomon and the two ladies who were fighting over a baby. Both said they were its mother. Now, King Solomon couldn´t give each lady half the baby, because babies aren´t something to be split in half. So this time one of the ladies would have to leave with empty hands. King Solomon knew he had to give the baby to the woman who would take the best care of it. So he told the ladies he would split the baby in half so they could share it. One of the ladies immediately begged him not to do this. She said she would give the whole baby up. Whether or not she was the baby´s biological mother, it was clear she was best for the baby.

There is another less dramatic but also charming story about how wise Solomon was. It tells how the Queen of Sheba, a very clever woman herself, came to see if Solomon was all he was cracked up to be.




That´s Sheba riding off to visit Solomon as depicted in an Ethiopian fresco. She brought with her two apparently identical bouquets of flowers. Now, one of them was real, but the other was an apparently flawless copy. Sheba wanted to know if Solomon could discover which was the natural bouquet. Solomon saw he couldn´t tell by himself, so he sent for help. He had some bees examine the bouquets. Bees are experts where flowers are concerned, because their lives depend on the pollen these produce. The bees identified the natural bouquet for Solomon.
The illustration below is by Piero della Francesca. In it, Solomon meets Sheba. Above is the full picture, below is a detail.










The lovely plate below is by the artist Edna Hibel. The baby is Solomon. He is with his father, King David, and his mother, Bathsheba, who was also a very beautiful woman.




There is an anonymous rhyme about Solomon and his father David that goes:

King David and King Solomon
Lived merry, merry lives,
With many, many ladyfriends
And many, many wives.
But when old age crept up on them,
With all its many qualms,
King Solomon wrote the Proverbs
And King David wrote the Psalms.

The Queen of Sheba is the most famous of Solomon´s loves. When Sheba returned to her country, she took with her a son by Solomon. His name was Menelik, and the emperors of Ethiopia are said to be descended from him.


We´re not done. We´ll be back with more when we can. And with the Spanish version.


Alpin

Piero´s painting is sexist!











Glorvina
Believe me, Alpin, King Solomon did his best to make a lot of very different people coexist back then. The Queen of Sheba knew.