Hebrew Bible: Song of Songs

The Writings

Song of Songs

11/16/2011

--Daniel Talent; QUIZ CANCELED 

Title in Hebrew:  shir ha-shirim; "the loveliest song"

• The compiler highly valued this song
• God is not mentioned
• neither is He mentioned in Esther
• fragments in Dead Sea Scrolls
• but some parts omitted
• these people were celibate!
• controversial
• appropriate in the cannon?
• post-exilic
• using a Persian word for garden

Focus of the Songs

• united on love between man and woman
• poet not shy in explicitly describing the love between these two people   
• many metaphors!

Allegories

• ancient Jews were apparently okay with understanding this form of literature literally
• Christians
• celibacy valued, so Song must be taken allegorically
• Rabbinical Judaism
• Akibah, one of the most prominent rabbis, recognizes the sacred literal interpretation of the Song
• the Holy of Holies of sacred writing
• so perhaps he also understood a deeper interpretation of the Song
• marriage is a holy concept

The Plight of Song of Songs

Why does Phipps think the Song is attributed to Solomon?

• much royal references
• greatest song came from greatest song writer, Solomon
• at that time, role-play was popular among Judaism
• Hurim was a joyful celebration, where the Song was celebrated (?)

Were the individuals married?

• why sneaking around?
• probably pertinence to married people based on what was acceptable for the society

What kind of imagery does the author use to describe the woman's sexuality?

• her virginity like a towered fortress
• locked garden -- royalty had locked gardens

What is the central question of Phipps? ALLEGORY

• influence from the Roman philosophical values on abstinence of various kinds
• monasticism (monks) were seen as holy for restricting selves from "carnal passions"
• Christianity
• Gentiles didn't have Jewish background and therefore the Jewish understanding of the Song

Why have biblical interpreters found the Song so difficult to interpret?

• the literal understanding of the Song is offensive and even blasphemous to early Christianity
• celibacy more valued than having a family

What is the allegorical interpretation that many monastic-thinking people have held? 

• symbolism 
• an extended metaphor of a bride and bridegroom
• the idea is that the truth behind the Song is too complex to describe in straightforward language; therefore, an allegorical explanation is needed
• ideas
• marriage between God and the Church
• male lover is Jesus and female is the Church
• God's relation to man's soul
• Monastic interpretation
• woman's breasts like a unification of the old and new covenants (the Christian Testaments)
• Hippolytus
• first Christian recorded to allegorize the Song
• message:  abstain from the world to attain divine joy from God
• Origen -- one of the earliest Christian interpreters of the Song
• he castrated himself in order not to sin -- extreme religiousness
• divine love comes from God
• St. Jerome
• girls were not to study this book until they became more advanced in restraining themselves from their physical desires
• women were receiving a religious education
• rewards come from abstaining from sexuality, that is, experiencing the divine love of God
• Bernard of Clairvaux
• describing love and joy that will come when the flesh (the body) is shed

Translation issues

• the Catholic version of the Bible intentionally interprets the Song as allegorical -- a mistranslation
• portrays sex as corrupt
• yet the ancient Hebrew has no connotations that sexuality was bad

Old Christianity Teachers 

• Luther
• criticized Origen for taking his own ideas of the Song and placing them on the Song
• yet Luther understood some allegory of slaves being obedient to current authority
• making an interpretation applicable to the world he lived in
• Jovinian
• nothing is wrong with getting marriage
• holiness is not more achieved from celibacy
• marriage and families are portrayed as good in the Song
• using the Song as his support
• monastic movement went underway
• Theodore of Mopsuestia
• most be a love song
• understood the characters as Solomon and Egyptian bride
• said that even Jesus was tempted to sin
• John Calvin
• the literal sense is too meaningful
• yet the love can be understood as a deeper understanding of God's/Christ's love for people

Puritan poet

• marriage as holy
• not inferior to celibacy