p. 1 Unity, Date, Authorship and the ‘Wisdom’ of the Song of Songs J. Cheryl Exum, University of Sheffield The time has come for scholars, especially those who have not researched the issues themselves, to look more closely at the evidence before repeating so-called established views about the unity and date of the Song of Songs, as if consensus exists. I refer to the views that the Song is an anthology or collection of love lyrics, and that on linguistic grounds (its affinities with Mishnaic Hebrew and the presence of late loanwords such as pardes and ’appiryon) it can be dated to the Hellenistic period.1 One can no longer speak of consensus at all with regard to the question of unity versus collection, and serious questions have been raised about our ability to date the Song, or any biblical book for that matter, on the basis of linguistic evidence alone. Reconsideration of these issues in Song of Songs study is therefore in order. Alongside them, I want to look briefly at the related question of authorship, and—because the theme of the 2012 SOTS/OTW meeting is ‘Wisdom Traditions in the Hebrew Bible and Beyond’—to conclude with some observations on the Song’s relation to Wisdom and wisdom literature. Unity With the rise of historical biblical criticism in the eighteenth century and its widespread practice in the following centuries, the Song of Songs, like other biblical books, fell victim to the atomizing tendencies of exegetes who were eager to identify multiple sources and signs of disunity everywhere2 —a practice that, in the Song’s case, has proved exceedingly popular. Since the latter part of the twentieth century, however, scholarly attention has increasingly focused on the final form of biblical texts—even the unity of the Twelve3— and more and more interpreters are now arguing for the unity of the Song, or simply treating the Song as the present unity it is.4 A number of studies since 2000 find evidence for the Song’s unity in such features as its thematic coherence, the repetitions of larger and smaller units and the consistency of character portrayal, among them commentaries by Garrett (2004), Hess 1 I heard these views most recently expressed in a paper, ‘The Monarchy in Ancient Israel’, delivered by J. Day at the Society for Old Testament Study Winter Meeting, 2012. 2 To mention only a few: P. Haupt, The Book of Canticles, Chicago 1902 (12 songs, not complete or in their proper order); M. Jastrow, The Song of Songs, Philadelphia 1921 (23, and some fragments); O. Eissfeldt, The Old Testament: An Introduction, translated from the 3rd German edn by P. R. Ackroyd, New York 1965, 490 (‘about 25’); F. Landsberger, ‘Poetic Units within the Song of Songs’, JBL 73 (1955), 203-16 (‘far, far greater’ than Eissfeldt’s 25 [216]); R. Gordis, The Song of Songs and Lamentations, rev. and augmented edn, New York 1974 [1954] (28, and later, 29). 3 See J. T. LeCureux, The Thematic Unity of the Book of the Twelve (HBM, 41), Sheffield 2012. 4 Among those who simply get on with interpreting the Song as it stands without concern for debates about unity, see C. E. Walsh, Exquisite Desire: Religion, the Erotic, and the Song of Songs, Minneapolis 2000; F. C. Black, The Artifice of Love: Grotesque Bodies in the Song of Songs, London 2009; C. Meredith, ‘Journeys in the Songscape: Reading Space in the Song of Songs’ (PhD thesis, University of Sheffield 2012). p. 2 (2005), Barbiero (2011), and my own commentary (2005), and monographs by Assis (2009) and Landy (2d edn, 2011).5 If the Song were an anthology of love poems, one might reasonably expect it to feature different protagonists and exhibit different attitudes toward love or describe different experiences of love, such as unrequited love, spurned love, secret love, fickle love. But this is not the case, and rare is the commentator who concentrates on discontinuity among the parts of the Song.6 Even commentators who view the Song as a collection tend to discuss it in terms of its unity. For example, Bergant (2001) finds among the poems in the collection ‘a kind of coherent plot of longing, searching, finding, losing, longing, etc.’ and ‘consistency in the characters’ behavior’.7 Longman, in his 2001 commentary, views the Song as an anthology of twenty-three poems with no ‘overarching narrative or plot’, but nevertheless finds ‘progression’ in the Song and observes that consistency of character portrayal and repetition of scenes and refrains gives it a certain unity.8 More recently, he would describe it as an anthology by a single poet, and possibly therefore a unity.9 The main objection to unity is the absence of any demonstrable logical sequence or an obvious structural organization or perceptible narrative development.10 The Song, however, is a lyric poem, not a dramatic one, and lyric poetry is a discontinuous form. We should therefore not expect it to display the kind of narrative development that produces, say, a plot, or even any progression at all.11 Moreover, the number of proposals that have been put forward for structural organization in the Song suggests that, as Francis Landy observes, far from being structureless the Song offers a superabundance of structural clues.12 It is not just 5 For a more detailed discussion of the question of unity, see J. C. Exum, Song of Songs: A Commentary (OTL), Louisville 2005, 33-45; see also D. Garrett, Song of Songs (WBC, 23B), Nashville 2004, 27-35; R. S. Hess, Song of Songs, Grand Rapids 2005, 27-34; G. Barbiero, Song of Songs: A Close Reading (trans. Michael Tait), Leiden 2011, 18-24 (a revised edition of his Il Cantico dei Cantici [Milan 2004]); E. Assis, Flashes of Fire: A Literary Analysis of the Song of Songs (LHBOTS, 503), New York 2009; F. Landy, Paradoxes of Paradise: Identity and Difference in the Song of Songs, 2d edn, Sheffield 2011, 29-54. 6 Of recent commentators, Zakovitch offers the strongest case, in my view; Y. Zakovitch, Das Hohelied (HThKat), Freiburg 2004. He sees the Song as a ‘sorgfaltig getroffene Auswahl’ of 27 songs and four fragments, ‘die langsam und allmählich gewachsen ist’ (30-31); moreover, ‘Gelegentlich ist beim Übergang von einem Lied zum nächsten auch eine Entwicklung im Verhältnis der beiden Liebenden zueinander zu beobachten’ (68). 7 D. Bergant, The Song of Songs (Berit Olam), Colllegeville 2001, xv. 8 T. Longman, III, The Song of Songs (NICOT), Grand Rapids 2001, 15-17, 55-56. 9 Personal communication. 10 Cf. Landy, Paradoxes of Paradise, 30: ‘[T]he only irrefutable ground for rejecting the unity of the Song, that it lacks logical sequence, rests on a false premise, namely that logical sequence is an indispensable requirement of lyric poetry’. There is, in fact, narrative development in the Song, but only in the speeches of the woman; see Exum, Song of Songs, 44 et passim. 11 Are the lovers not, at the end, in the same position they were at the beginning? The sense one might get of ‘progression’ comes more from the fact that the lovers seem to take on distinct personalities as we get to know them than from any plot development; see Exum, Song of Songs, 8-9, 11-13, 262-63. 12 F. Landy, Review of M. Timothea Elliott, The Literary Unity of the Canticle, Biblica 72 (1991), 571. p. 3 repetitions and stylistic and literary coherence that argue for unity but also the consistency with which the lovers speak about love along gender-determined lines (she is lovesick, he is awestruck; she tells stories about their relationship in which she and he are both characters, he looks at her and tells her what he sees and how it affects him).13 Another sign of unity is the way the poet shows as well as says (8.6) that love is strong as death by means of poetic strategies, or techniques, employed across the space of the poem. They include creating an illusion of immediacy (the impression that, far from being simply reported, the action is taking place in the present, unfolding before the reader); conjuring the lovers up and letting them disappear in an endless deferral of presence;14 inviting readers to identify with the lovers by presenting them as types of lovers rather than specific lovers of the past; providing an audience within the poem, the women of Jerusalem, whose presence encourages the reader’s entry into the lover’s seemingly private world of eroticism; blurring distinctions between anticipation, enjoyment of love’s delights, and satisfaction (and so between past, present, and future); and, in an effort to make love appear on-going and never-ending, refusing to bring the poem to closure, so that the Song, in effect, circles back upon itself to begin ever again with desire in medias res (‘let him kiss me …’).15 New approaches to the text could also shed incidental light on the question of unity. Christopher Meredith’s application of spatial theory to the Song reveals that units often thought to be quite distinct are linked through spatial continuity. For example, Song 3.1-5 and 3.6-11 both display a concentric pattern, with an enclosed centre (the chamber within the mother’s house, the enclosed litter) surrounded at its outer edges by a male circle whose function is defence. And spatial continuity also exists between 4.1–5.1 and 5.2–6.3: While the controlling imagery has changed in the text —from garden to city— the underlying spatiality that structures ch. 4 rolls into ch. 5. The description of a locked garden/lover (4:12-5:1) has made way for a locked house/lover. The focus of the text is still a fairly unelaborated enclosed space … inhabited by the female. It must again stand in for the female body as the double entendres build up. The domestic space unfolds as a loose replication of the garden and the configuration of the lovers’ world forms a point of relative continuity as the poem moves into a new symbolic world. If these sections are to be read as entirely different, why reuse the same notions —of locking, of enclosure, of the female-as-container? Why has the basic spatial supposition of the text, the supposition of entry, exclusion and access, not changed too?16 13 Exum, Song of Songs, 15-17. Note, for example, the similarities between the description of the man in 2.8-9 and the palanquin in 3.6-11: both are acts of conjury on the part of the woman in which the man (as himself, then in Solomonic guise) approaches from afar and gradually comes closer and closer to the speaker; see Exum, Song of Songs, 123-25, 142-43. 15 On these techniques, see Exum, Song of Songs, 3-13; see also, on voice, mode of presentation and major themes, M. V. Fox, The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs, Madison 1985, 253-94. 16 Meredith, ‘Journeys in the Songscape’, chapter 2, ‘Undreaming the Song’s World: On Inhabiting a Phantasmagoric Text’, 77-78. 14 p. 4 Debate on the question of unity will no doubt continue (old theories die hard), but the burden of proof, as Michael Fox already compellingly argued in 1985, now rests with those who would claim that the Song is a collection.17 Date There is little evidence from the poem itself to help us date it.18 A reassessment of the view that the Song was composed in the late post-exilic or Hellenistic period is particularly in order in view of the difficulty—if not impossibility in the view of some—of dating texts on linguistic grounds alone.19 It is frequently pointed out that the Song contains Aramaisms and stylistic features typical of late biblical and Mishnaic Hebrew. But as Ian Young, in particular, has argued, these linguistic features could already have existed in the pre-exilic period;20 they could be dialectic 17 Fox, The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs, 202-26. Clearly it was composed after the time of Solomon, and the appearance of Tirzah in parallelism with Jerusalem in 6.4 would seem to indicate that the Song was written after the division of the monarchy—though some would not see Tirzah as a proper noun (see, e.g., M. H. Pope, Song of Songs [AB, 7C], Garden City 1977, 558-560), and it could be argued that this is one of the scribal changes the text underwent after it was composed. The parallelism cannot be used to prove that the Song was written during the time that Tirzah was the capital of the Northern Kingdom, for, by the time of composition, Tirzah could have had simply a legendary status (e.g. Fox, The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs, 187), but it is an attractive argument in view of recent arguments for the Song’s early date and Northern connections. David Carr, e.g., observes that taking references to places associated with Israel’s early history as no more than literary allusions to past times ‘is only demanded if other factors require a later dating’ (The Formation of the Hebrew Bible: A New Reconstruction, Oxford 2011, 441). 19 Ian Young has made a strong case for reassessing common assumptions about ‘Early’ Biblical Hebrew and ‘Late’ Biblical Hebrew, and for seeing EBH and LBH not as representing different chronological periods in the development of Hebrew but rather as co-existing styles of literary Hebrew throughout the biblical period, with EBH representing a conservative tendency among scribes and LBH a non-conservative one; see I. Young, Diversity in Pre-exilic Hebrew (FAT, 5), Tübingen 1993); I. Young and R. Rezetko, with the assistance of M. Ehrensvärd, Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts, 2 vols., London 2008. See also A. Hurvitz, ‘The Chronological Significance of “Aramaisms” in Biblical Hebrew’, IEJ 18 (1968), 234-40; Hurwitz, ‘Can Biblical Texts Be Dated Linguistically? Chronological Perspectives in the Historical Study of Biblical Hebrew’, in: A. Lemaire and M. Sæbø (eds.), Congress Volume Oslo 1998 (VTSup, 80), Leiden 2000, 143-60; and the articles in Ian Young (ed.), Biblical Hebrew: Studies in Chronology and Typology (JSOTSup 369), London 2003. 20 I. Young, ‘Biblical Texts Cannot Be Dated Linguistically’, Hebrew Studies 46 (2005), 341-51. Young’s argument that late biblical Hebrew or proto-late biblical Hebrew already existed in the pre-exilic period and that no linguistic features, not even Persian loanwords (if there are Persian loanwords), can be connected to only one chronological phase of biblical Hebrew has particular relevance for the Song of Songs. Hurvitz observes that the numerous Aramaisms in the Song may be vestiges of Northern dialect and not necessarily late biblical Hebrew (‘The Chronological Significance of “Aramaisms” in Biblical Hebrew’, 236; Hurvitz, ‘Hebrew and Aramaic in the Biblical Period: The Problem of “Aramaisms” in Linguistic Research on the Hebrew Bible’, in Young [ed.], Biblical Hebrew, 24-37 [31 and n. 15]). Some time ago W. F. Albright noted the use of archaic language and signs of Northern dialect, as well as the dominance of northern geographical terms, and posited a fifth to fourth century BCE date for the final form of the Song (‘Archaic Survivals in the Text of Canticles’, in: D. Winton Thomas and W. D. McHardy [eds.], Hebrew and Semitic Studies Presented to Godfrey Rolles Driver in Celebration of His Seventieth Birthday, Oxford 1963, 1-7 [1]). 18 p. 5 (specifically, a northern literary dialect);21 and some (if not many) of them could also be the result of scribal changes in the course of an early text’s transmission.22 One cannot appeal to the presence of loanwords from Persian (pardes, 4.13) and Greek (’appiryon, 3.9) as prima facie evidence of a late date. Not only do we have to reckon with scribal changes in the course of the text’s apparently fluid transmission history23 but also the origin of these words is debatable, as is the question of how and when they might have entered the Hebrew language. It is by no means certain that ’appiryon comes from Greek,24 and pardes, widely but not unanimously agreed to be of Persian (or, better, Iranian or Indo-European) origin, could have come into Hebrew before the Persian period through early trade contacts.25 21 Young, Diversity, 165-66, where he proposes that the author was from the North but probably lived in Jerusalem. 22 See Young, ‘Biblical Texts Cannot Be Dated Linguistically’, 350. Based on his comparison of the MT Song with 4QCantb, where he notes numerous linguistic variants, Young concludes that language was subject to constant revision by the scribes who transmitted the texts over time; I. Young, ‘Notes on the Language of 4QCantb’, Journal of Jewish Studies 52 (2001), 122-31 (130). See also Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd, Linguistic Dating, vol. 1, 359: ‘Textual stability is a fundamental premise of the linguistic dating of biblical texts … yet the extant evidence shows that ancient texts of the Bible were characterized by textual instability’ (italics theirs). See, too, the discussion of all three of the points mentioned above in Carr, Formation, 442-47, and the sources cited there. 23 See Carr, Formation, 432-33. Carr observes that this fluidity works against Dobbs-Allsopp’s arguments (F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, ‘Late Linguistic Features in the Song of Songs’, in: A. C. Hagedorn [ed.], Perspectives on the Song of Songs/Perspektiven der Hoheliedauslegung [BZAW, 356], Berlin 2005, 27-77) for dating the Song based on its orthography (Formation, 433 n. 3). He also notes that, as a love poem, the Song may have a more colloquial profile than other texts to which it is compared (432, 442-45). 24 Albright, ‘Archaic Survivals’, 1 and n. 2; Young, Diversity, 162; Dobbs-Allsopp, ‘Late Linguistic Features,’ 67-71; cf. Scott B. Noegel and Gary A. Rendsburg, Solomon’s Vineyard: Literary and Linguistic Studies in the Song of Songs, Atlanta 2009, 179-80. Dolls-Allsopp concludes, ‘[T]he linguistic profile of Cant, while compatible with a Hellenistic dating, does not require it, and therefore, the supposition that Cant is a Hellenistic work will need to be funded [sic, founded?] and moved on other than linguistic grounds’ (‘Late Linguistic Features’, 71). 25 Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd, Linguistic Dating, vol. 1, 286-311; vol. 2, 61. See also Young, Diversity, 161-62; Noegel and Rendsburg, Solomon’s Vineyard, 174-84; S. R. Driver, An Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament (7th edn; Edinburgh 1898), 449. The fact that Greek paradeisos (which LXX uses to translate Hebrew pardes in 4.13) refers to the pleasure parks of Persian kings in earlier sources but in the third century BCE came to mean ‘garden’ or ‘orchard’ (Noegel and Rendsburg, Solomon’s Vineyard, 178; J. A. L. Lee, A Lexical Study of the Septuagint Version of the Pentateuch [Septuagint and Cognate Studies, 14], Chico 1983, 53-55) does not mean that pardes could not have meant ‘garden, orchard’ in Hebrew at an earlier date. Moreover, whether we are to think of the garden of Song 4.12-15, with its exotic, imported plants and spices, as an orchard or garden of fruit-bearing trees and other plants, or as something on a grander scale, along the lines of the famed gardens of Assyrian and Egyptian royalty, is debatable; on such gardens and their cultivation, see Meredith, ‘Locked Gardens and the City as Labyrinth’, Chapter 3 in ‘Journeys in the Songscape’, esp. 109-20. On the question of Persian or other origins of foreign names for aromatics, see Dobbs-Allsopp, ‘Late Linguistic Features’, 65-66; A. Brenner, ‘Aromatics and Perfumes in the Song of Songs’, JSOT 25 (1983), 75-81. p. 6 The argument that the Song is written in a northern dialect, proposed over a century ago by S. R. Driver,26 has been championed recently by Scott Noegel and Gary Rendsburg, who conclude that the Song was written around 900 BCE in a northern dialect of ancient Hebrew.27 At the other end of the spectrum, the late dating has recently been defended by F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, whose analysis of the linguistic evidence leads him to posit a date between 530 and 323 BCE.28 In his monumental study of the growth and development of the Hebrew Bible, David Carr provides a judicious survey of the evidence and concludes that it points to an early pre-exilic date ‘at least of major portions of the Song’, though its present form is Hellenistic.29 Scholars continue to repeat the arguments for the traditional late dating of the Song, but there now exists a serious and substantial body of evidence to challenge this position, and continuing investigation of the linguistic evidence is needed.30 Further study of cultural contacts and cross-cultural influences could shed light on the question of date. The similarities between the Song and ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian love poems are so strong that we can assume their general influence 26 Driver, Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, 449. Solomon’s Vineyard, 3-62, 174-84. See also G. A. Rendsburg, ‘Israelian Hebrew in the Song of Songs’, in: S. E. Fassberg and A. Hurvitz (eds.), Biblical Hebrew in Its Northwest Semitic Setting: Typological and Historical Perspectives, Jerusalem 2006, 315-23. A number of northern place names are mentioned, and, if the poem is written in a northern dialect, these features might suggest a northern origin (so Driver, Noegel and Rendsburg, among others; but see the caveat of Dolls-Allsopp [‘Late Linguistic Features’, 72 n. 259] that large portions of the North and Samaria were well populated during the Persian period, and so could easily appear in a poem composed in the post-exilic period). Locating the place of composition from geographical references in the poem is problematic because of the lack of connections with specific historical events; most of the references appear in metaphors (e.g., Tirzah, Carmel, Sharon, Damascus, Lebanon, Engedi, Heshbon, Gilead). These places could have been chosen because they were famous—Lebanon for its cedars, Engedi for its oasis, etc.—or for their associations and ability to evoke a magical time and place. The principal setting of the poem seems to be Jerusalem—the women of Jerusalem are the audience—but the lovers traverse the whole countryside, including remote Lebanon, Senir, Amana, and Hermon. There is nothing to stop a poet from writing about far-away or legendary places, nor does the poet have to live where the characters in the poem seem to live. 28 ‘Late Linguistic Features’; for a critique of a number of Dobbs-Allsopp’s arguments, see Carr, Formation, 444-45 nn. 41, 43, 445-46 nn. 50, 51. 29 Carr, Formation, 432-48 (447). Zakovitch suggests the influence of the Song or a work like it on such texts as Jer. 6.2-5; Gen. 30.14-18; Hos. 14.6-8; Isa. 5.1-7 and Prov. 31.10-31 (Das Hohelied, 5456). 30 To illustrate the importance of on-going assessment of the evidence, I might note that Carr is not the only one to have reassessed his views on the date of the Song; Young has changed his position from advocating an early date (Diversity, 165) to ‘complete agnosticism’ on the subject (‘Notes on the Language of 4QCantb’, 130 n. 50), and Rendsburg, who was prepared to accept a late date for the Song (‘Israelian Hebrew’, 318), now advocates an early one (Noegel and Rendsburg, Solomon’s Vineyard, 184). The conclusion of Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd merits repeating here: ‘Song of Songs fits nowhere in a linear history of BH. Whatever period we date it to, we must explain its language as evidence of another variety of Hebrew than that of the rest of the Hebrew Bible. Once we realise that Song of Songs’ Hebrew was, according to our current knowledge, never the normal sort of literary Hebrew in any age, we no longer have any firm peg to date its composition. If this language reflects a colloquial or regional dialect, for example, there is no reason why it is necessarily late or early—it is just different’ (Linguistic Dating, vol. 1, 197). 27 p. 7 on the poet.31 Under what historical and social circumstances would a poet writing in Hebrew have been influenced by Egyptian and Mesopotamian love poetry?32 Can we find the influence of Hellenistic literature as well? This question is especially relevant for the dating of the Song, for, if it could be shown that the poet was familiar with Hellenistic love poetry, the argument for a late date would be confirmed. Some scholars have argued for Hellenistic influence on the Song, but to date we lack the kind of thoroughgoing study needed to demonstrate it—something along the lines of Michael Fox’s The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs—that looks not only at selected or isolated themes and motifs but at the larger picture, at point of view, voice and mode of presentation, poetic technique, major themes, attitudes to love, similarities and, importantly, differences.33 Although they are not strong enough to suggest direct influence, some scholars have noted similarities between the Song of Songs and the Idylls of Theocritus.34 Joan Burton posits a third century BCE 31 It is not a question of direct borrowing but rather of a cultural milieu in which such poetry was available. Throughout his commentary, Pope notes numerous Ugaritic parallels, and concludes, ‘[T]he antiquity of at least parts of the Songs [read ‘Song’] cannot be doubted in light of the Ugaritic parallels’ (Song of Songs, 27). 32 Fox considers the Ramesside period (the only period from which Egyptian love songs have survived) to be the most likely time for the importation and influence of Egyptian love poetry in Palestine, but notes as well contact in the reign of Solomon and in the time of Hezekiah (The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs, 191-93); G. Gerleman attributes the strong Egyptian influence on the Song to the political and cultural contacts between Egypt and Israel in the Solomonic era (Das Hohelied [BKAT, 18], Neukirchen 1965, 68-77). Antonio Loprieno attributes the similarities to a common festive background of the genre in Egypt and Israel (‘Searching for a Common Background: Egyptian Love Poetry and the Biblical Song of Songs’, in Hagedorn [ed.], Perspectives, 105-35). A seventh-century BCE Akkadian text, The Love Lyrics of Nabu and Tashmetu, is considered by Martti Nissinen to be the closest Mesopotamian parallel to the Song (‘Love Lyrics of Nabû and Tašmetu: An Assyrian Song of Songs?’, in: M. Dietrich and I. Kottsieper [eds.], ‘Und Mose schrieb dieses Lied auf’: Studien zum Alten Testament und zum Alten Orient [Fs O. Loretz], Münster 1998, 585-634 [624]), and its date raises the question of possible Neo-Assyrian influence on the Song, though of course both texts could be influenced by similar, and perhaps long-established poetic traditions. 33 A recent contribution in this area can be found in Hagedorn (ed.), Perspectives, which includes a section on ancient Near Eastern and ancient Greek parallels. In his contribution to the volume, Hagedorn, who assumes a Hellenistic date for the Song and the ‘strong possibility’ of the poet’s knowledge of Greek literature, compares the Song to the Fragmentum Grenfellianum (174/3 BCE), but wisely observes ‘one should not disregard the differences’; A. C. Hagedorn, ‘Jealousy and Desire at Night: Fragmentum Grenfellianum and Song of Songs’, in Hagedorn (ed.) Perspectives, 206-27 (225). In my view, the similarities are too general to be meaningful, and herein lies the problem: love poetry the world over, ancient and modern, displays many shared features. Indeed, Hagedorn is hard pressed to find jealousy of a rival/rivals, the key theme of the Fragmentum, in the Song. One wonders if meaningful connections between the Song and Greek literature exist, since they are so difficult to establish; for other attempts, see A. Hagedorn, ‘Of Foxes and Vineyards: Greek Perspectives on the Song of Songs’, VT 53 (2003), 337-52; H.-P. Müller, ‘Eine Parallele zur Weingartenmetapher des Hohenliedes aus der frühgriechischen Lyrik’, in: M. Dietrich and I. Kottsieper (eds.), ‘Und Mose schrieb dieses Lied auf’: Studien zum Alten Testament und zum Alten Orient (Fs O. Loretz), Münster 1998, 569-84. 34 J. Burton, ‘Themes of Female Desire and Self-assertion in the Song of Songs and Hellenistic Poetry’, in Hagedorn (ed.), Perspectives, 180-205; R. Hunter, ‘”Sweet Talk”: Song of Songs and the Traditions of Greek Poetry’, in Hagedorn (ed.), Perspectives, 228-44 (240-41); Hagedorn, ‘Of Foxes and Vineyards’. p. 8 date for the Song, noting similarities to Theocritus and other early Greek poetry, such as themes of mutual desire, female self-assertion, a female erotic gaze, and a challenge to traditional gender roles—but these are themes that appear in ancient Near Eastern love poems as well.35 In the search for a provenance, Burton’s conclusion nevertheless merits consideration: ‘the multi-cultural context of a [thirdcentury] Hellenistic kingdom centered in Egypt and extending to Palestine would have offered Jewish writers a multiplicity of literary traditions—including not only Greek poetry but also Egyptian love songs—as possible background for the Song’.36 Need we assume Hellenistic influence (and thus a late date) to explain similarities between the Song of Songs and early Greek love poetry? It is not difficult, after all, to find similarities between love poems from completely different times and cultures, without any likelihood of dependence.37 Are the poet of the Song of Songs and the Greek poets simply writing within a broad shared Mediterranean poetic tradition?38 The similarities between the Song and the poetic traditions of Egypt and Mesopotamia are much greater than those between the Song and parallels so far adduced to ancient Greek love poetry. Is the poet consciously archaizing, looking to the past for models? Or is the poet unfamiliar with, or uninspired by, Greek love poems? Like Young, I remain agnostic on the question of date. Although I find the question fascinating, I suspect that knowing its date would have little effect on interpretation of the Song. Attempts to posit a historical or political background— 35 Along with the themes of female desire and self-assertion, Burton notes the prominent theme of male helplessness and erotic passivity, a theme lacking in the Song (‘Themes’, 201 et passim) The Song’s male lover does, however, feel the loss of control (‘you have captured my heart’, 4.9; ‘turn your eyes away from me, for they overwhelm me’, 6.5); see Exum, Song of Songs, 15-17. 36 Burton, ‘Themes’, 183. 37 C. Rabin proposed similarities to Tamil poetry, though his examples are limited (‘The Song of Songs and Tamil Poetry’, Studies in Religion/Sciences religieuses 3 [1973/4], 205-19); there are arresting similarities to the Gita Govinda of Jayadeva (twelfth century CE), which F. Edgerton refers to as ‘The Hindu Song of Songs’, in: W. H. Schiff [ed.], The Song of Songs: A Symposium, Philadelphia 1924, 43-47), as well as in the Bengali Vaishnava love lyrics (sixteenth century CE), which show the influence of the Gita Govinda (see the translation of E. C. Dimock, Jr and D. Levertov, In Praise of Krishna: Songs from the Bengali, Garden City 1967). F. X. Clooney finds points of comparison between the Song and the Holy Word of Mouth (Tiruvaymoli), a ninth-century Hindu text (Clooney, His Hiding Place Is Darkness: An Exercise in Interreligious Theopoetics, Stanford 2013; see also Clooney, ‘By the Power of Her Word: Absence, Memory, and Speech in the Song of Songs and a Hindu Mystical Text’, Exchange 41 [2012], 213-44). For years one of my essay assignments for my Song of Songs class was to compare the Song of Songs to a love poem of the student’s choice; the many, varied results revealed remarkable similarities (as well as differences) across cultures and historical periods. 38 As R. Hunter cautions: ‘Early Greek poetry cannot in fact offer clear parallels to the type of semidramatic exchanges between young lovers familiar from the Hebrew poems. Certain motifs and images are, of course, shared between the poetic traditions (for example, the association of fruitfulness and gardens with love), but … claims of transmission from one culture to another are always vulnerable to assertions that such ideas might easily arise independently in many places and/or that we should rather be thinking of a broad Mediterranean Gemeingut of images, motifs, and poetic structures (such as the paraklausithyron), which have their basis in shared cultural features’ (‘”Sweet Talk”’, 229-30). p. 9 such as a polemic against Solomon or the excesses of his reign39—simply do not find support from the poem itself. The Song is a love poem; it universalizes love by not limiting itself to a particular time and place.40 Authorship The Song offers no clue to the circumstances of its composition or the identity of its author.41 If the Song is a collection, then we are dealing with multiple authors, or perhaps a combination of smaller collections or even the common authorship of many of the individual poems. Unless one concludes that the editing is haphazard42 or extremely loose (e.g., simply connecting poems on the basis of catchwords),43 one may recognize either some general principles of arrangement that lend coherence to the Song or a plan so thoroughgoing that the editor or redactor deserves to be considered the author of the final product.44 If the Song exhibits cohesiveness, homogeneity, consistency of character portrayal, and a distinctive vision of love— and I believe it does—is there any need to posit an editor at all? No literature is created in a vacuum; poets work within poetic traditions, and the author of the Song clearly draws upon a rich cultural heritage of love poetry, as the Mesopotamian and Egyptian examples that have come down to us reveal. Nor would the literary influences on the poet have been limited to love poetry, and the poet could have drawn on oral as well as written sources—traditional material such as folk songs, for example. The Song is the work of an educated poet, a poet familiar with ancient Near Eastern erotica and accomplished in the art of composition. Its lyric beauty and sophisticated style are frequently hailed by commentators, and its rich, sensuous imagery and dense metaphorical language bear ample testimony to the poet’s literary skill. Moreover, it is surely an artistically sophisticated poem that can be read, as the 39 Noegel and Rendsburg, for example, identify the genre of the Song as akin to the medieval Arabic hijā’ and tašbīb, which emphasize blame through what resembles praise, and conclude that the Song is a love poem on a surface reading, but the subtext is one of ridicule and invective, aimed at censuring Solomon in particular and the Judean monarchy in general (Solomon’s Vineyard, 133-68). 40 One could say it reflects the attitudes of its time to social and gender roles (as Burton, ‘Themes’, observes; see also Exum, Song of Songs, 25-28), even though it may entertain alternative visions. 41 It is, in fact, the poet’s success in creating lovers who are universal figures and in depicting love as not bound by time or place that makes identifying the historical context of the Song so difficult. Solomon is not the lover of the poem, but the mention of Solomon in the superscription and six times in the poem (1.5; 3.7, 9, 11; 8.11, 12), the sense of leisure and luxury, the interest in flora and fauna, and the important role played by Jerusalem, all bring to mind some of the descriptions of Solomon’s reign (1 Kings 4.20, 24-25, 33; 10.22-29), and lend the Song a Solomonic ambiance. 42 E.g., Pope, Song of Songs, 54. 43 E.g., W. Rudolph, Das Buch Ruth, Das Hohe Lied, Die Klagelieder (KAT XVII, 1-3), Gütersloh 1962, 97-100; O. Keel, The Song of Songs, trans. F. J. Gaiser, Minneapolis 1994, 17 (German original: Das Hohelied [ZBAT, 18], Zurich 1986). 44 Fox, The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs, 218-226; Exum, Song of Songs, 33-45. p. 10 Song has been, as both delicately erotic and sexually overt at the same time. As evidence that the poet moved in educated circles, we should also note the poet’s knowledge of the world of nature, of exotic plants and exotic places, of spices and other luxury items, as well as the poet’s sensitivity to both a woman’s and man’s point of view.45 Does this suggest that the poet was—to use the unfortunate term—a ‘sage’, and that the poem was part of Israel’s so-called intellectual tradition? Is the Song a ‘Wisdom’ Book? The Song can be connected to ‘wisdom’. In a recent article Katharine Dell has shown this in an assessment of the evidence that is both far-ranging and cautious in its conclusions.46 But to my mind the connections adduced between the Song and ‘wisdom’ by Dell and others remain speculative and tenuous. My problem is that I do not know what ‘wisdom’ is, and I do not believe an ‘intellectual tradition’—if we prefer to use that more general term47—was the domain of one group, the so-called sages.48 But even if we accept the argument that there was an intellectual tradition and a group that shaped and transmitted it,49 does the Song belong to this tradition? 45 The sex of the poet is also impossible to ascertain, though perhaps future research will shed some light on this question. Men were more likely than women to have been educated, but this does not rule out the possibility of an educated woman having composed the Song; on literacy, see A. R. Millard, ‘Literacy (Israel)’, ABD IV, 337-40; I. M. Young, ‘Israelite Literacy: Interpreting the Evidence: Part I’, VT 48 (1998), 239-53; Young, ‘Israelite Literacy: Interpreting the Evidence: Part II’, VT 48 (1998), 408-22; S. Niditch, Oral World and Written Word: Ancient Israelite Literature, Louisville, 1996, 39-77. Love poetry, given its emphasis on a woman’s point of view and its association with the domestic sphere, may have been a genre to which women made a special contribution; see S. D. Goitein, ‘Women as Creators of Biblical Genres’, Prooftexts 8 (1988), 1-33; F. van Dijk-Hemmes, ‘Traces of Women’s Texts in the Hebrew Bible’, in: A. Brenner and F. van Dijk-Hemmes, On Gendering Texts: Female and Male Voices in the Hebrew Bible, Leiden 1993, 71-81. 46 K. Dell, ‘Does the Song of Songs Have Any Connections to Wisdom?’, in Hagedorn (ed.), Perspectives, 8-26; see also the briefer, more general comments of M. Sadgrove, ‘The Song of Songs as Wisdom Literature’, Studia Biblica 1978, I. Papers on Old Testament and Related Themes (JSOTSup, 11), Sheffield 1979, 245-48. 47 See R. N. Whybray, The Intellectual Tradition in the Old Testament (BZAW, 135), Berlin 1974; J. Blenkinsopp, Sage, Priest, Prophet: Religious and Intellectual Leadership in Ancient Israel, Louisville 1995, 9-65. 48 Cf. R. E. Murphy, ‘Wisdom in the OT’, ABD VI, 928: ‘A common culture and world of ideas was shared by all classes in Israelite society. The sapiential understanding of reality (descried above in “thought world”) was not a mode of thinking cultivated exclusively by a small group…[W]isdom motifs could have circulated and would not be the exclusive possession of a given class. The wisdom heritage must have constituted a common fund of knowledge experience for each Israelite.’ 49 Blenkinsopp criticizes Whybray for supposing that a tradition can be sustained and transmitted without institutional grounding, and he locates this activity in an upper-class, educated type of intellectual leadership (e.g., teachers, scribes) within that tradition (Sage, Priest, Prophet, 10-20 et passim). I mention above that the Song is the work of an educated poet, but that is not enough to place the Song in Israel’s intellectual tradition as Blenkinsopp describes it (and Blenkinsopp does not include the Song in his discussion). Whybray discusses the Song briefly, concluding that there is ‘no reason to suppose a connection between the author(s) of the book and the intellectual tradition’ (The Intellectual Tradition, 119-20 [120]). p. 11 Perhaps the Song was used in education,50 though we know little about this subject, but does that make it a ‘wisdom book’? The Song is not usually included in discussions of wisdom literature. In his classic study, Wisdom in Israel, von Rad mentions it only once, in a footnote, and that note is not even about the Song as related to ‘wisdom’.51 And no less a wisdom authority than Roland Murphy can assert, in his Preface to the volume on wisdom literature for the Forms of the Old Testament Literature series, in which the Song of Songs is included, that ‘It will be clear to the careful reader that only three (Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes) of the six books treated here are technically “wisdom literature”’.52 He does not include the Song in his discussion of ‘Wisdom in the OT’ for the Anchor Bible Dictionary, apart from one paragraph, in which he observes that the only wisdom element in the Song may be the lines about love as strong as death in 8.6, but this, he avers, does not change the Song’s genre (love poetry).53 Even Dell, in her discussion of the Song’s connections to wisdom, observes, ‘Clearly the Song is not to be characterized as wisdom literature in the same way as Proverbs or Ecclesiastes on a narrow, form-critical definition’,54 and ‘…even on a wider definition of the genre of wisdom, which might arguably include works influenced strongly by wisdom forms or ideas, the Song tends to stay off the list. The reason is because “love songs” are a clearly defined genre in their own right…’55 And Joseph Blenkinsopp, who makes a plausible case for a lay intellectual tradition in biblical Israel—one that ‘presuppose[s] a more or less coherent, if seldom articulated, worldview’—includes Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes but finds it ‘unclear whether [the Song] relates in any way to the tradition of the sages, apart from the formal attribution to Solomon’.56 50 Carr considers it likely that ancient Israel included love poems in its educational corpus, both in Northern and early Judean education (Formation, 433, 439). 51 G. von Rad, Wisdom in Israel, Abingdon 1972, 168 n. 29: ‘The loved one is also called “sister”, S. of S. 4.9f., 12; 5.1; etc.’ 52 Wisdom Literature: Job, Proverbs, Ruth, Canticles, Ecclesiastes, and Esther (FOTL, 13), Grand Rapids 1981, xiii. He does go on to state, ‘As a whole, the Song emphasizes values which are primary in wisdom thought (cf. Proverbs 1–9)’. What values would that be, one wonders. 53 Murphy, ‘Wisdom in the OT’, 928. He adds, ‘Nevertheless, it may be that the sages were responsible for the transmission and editing of the Song (and its attribution to the wise Solomon), because it was in line with the societal values (fidelity, etc., of Prov 5:15ff.) which the sages treasured’—a statement that is vague at best; see also Murphy’s brief remarks in The Song of Songs (Hermeneia), Minneapolis 1990, 99; and Murphy, The Tree of Life: An Exploration of Biblical Wisdom Literature, 2d edn, Grand Rapids 1996, 106-7. On ‘wisdom editing’, see also Dell, who abandons her normally cautious stance when she concludes, ‘It seems then that the argument for a wisdom redaction or stage of literary transmission is quite convincing…’, before continuing, ‘and yet it is hard to know at precisely what stage the wisdom editors would have made their mark’ (‘Connections to Wisdom?’, 17). Who were these editors and why should they be connected with wisdom? 54 Dell, ‘Connections to Wisdom?’, 8; elsewhere she argues that on such a narrow definition even Job does not fit (The Book of Job as Sceptical Literature [BZAW, 197], Berlin 1991, 87). She does not include the Song in her contribution to The Blackwell Companion to the Hebrew Bible on ‘Wisdom Literature’ (ed. L. G. Perdue; Oxford 2005, 418-31). 55 Dell, ‘Connections to Wisdom?’, 9. 56 Blenkinsopp, Sage, Priest, Prophet, 14, 48. p. 12 What about the possibility of such a thing as ‘wisdom influence’ on the Song? Dell cites numerous examples of links between the Song and ‘wisdom’. But should we think of direct influence, whose direction is hard to ascertain, or of common ideas, motifs and topoi that circulated, perhaps for centuries, in the wider culture? If connections can be found between the Song and sapiential literature such as Proverbs, Job (?), and Ecclesiastes, it may mean no more than a familiarity with love poetry on the part of ‘the sages’.57 In some cases a direct influence may exist, as, for example, Prov. 31.10-31, which Yair Zakovitch sees as a polemic against the Song of Songs.58 But in others, the use of motifs from love poetry in ‘wisdom’ contexts, either consciously or unconsciously, and either from the Song of Songs or a work like it, cannot be used to argue that the Song of Songs is wisdom literature. If the Song is a ‘wisdom book’, wherein would its ‘wisdom’ lie? In recommending that one fall head over heels in love because it is so wonderful, and in urging readers to pass their time enjoying sexual pleasures and romantic trysts al fresco? In encouraging the love-struck among its readership to flout social conventions, and to give no thought to their personal safety (like the woman in 3.2-3 and 5.6-7)? The Song does not teach or preach or offer advice to its audience, except to tell the women of Jerusalem not awaken love before it wishes (and the meaning of this exhortation is debated).59 Its one didactic statement, in 8.6-7, would not be out of place in Proverbs,60 but one aphorism does not a wisdom book make. If ‘love is strong as death’ is the Song’s teaching, its wisdom, I would say that as a Wisdom Book the Song of Songs is not very successful, for, although the sentiment may be profound, the four couplets about love are rather banal: …for love is strong as death, jealousy as adamant as Sheol. Its flames are flames of fire, an almighty flame. Floods cannot quench love, nor rivers sweep it away. Should a man offer all his wealth for love, 57 Dell mentions links to all three books, and suggests that Proverbs reflects the influence of the Song (‘Connections to Wisdom?’, 17-24). 58 Y. Zakovitch, ‘“A Woman of Valor, ’eshet hayil” (Proverbs 31.10-31): A Conservative Response to the Song of Songs’, in: D.J.A. Clines and E. van Wolde (eds.), A Critical Engagement: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honour of J. Cheryl Exum (HBM, 38), Sheffield 2011, 401-13. 59 See Fox, The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs, 109; Exum, Song of Songs, 117-18; Brian P. Gault, ‘A “Do Not Disturb” Sign? Reexamining the Adjuration Refrain in Song of Songs’, JSOT 36 (2011), 93-104. 60 J. C. Exum, ‘The Poetic Genius of the Song of Songs’, in Hagedorn (ed.), Perspectives, 78-79. I see these verses as central to the Song, but the medium, the poem itself, is the message (‘Poetic Genius’; Exum, Song of Songs, 2-13 et passim). Note too, that these verses appear in the mouth of one of the characters in the poem, and in a subordinate clause, not as a description of love in and of itself. To suggest that an editor added 8.6-7 (and perhaps other references) to bring the Song into wisdom’s ambit is pure speculation. If an editor had wanted to make the Song a ‘wisdom book’, putting these verses in the author’s voice and placing them at the end, like the editorial conclusion to Qoheleth, would have been easier and more effective. p. 13 it would be utterly disdained. Apart from these verses, the Song does not describe the meaning of love or the nature of love. Rather than pontificating about love, it shows its readers how delicious and thrilling erotic love is by allowing us to overhear what lovers say about it. The Song of Songs is a love poem, and it is as a love poem that it certainly belongs among The Best of Songs, as its title boasts. The Song of Songs is not Torah and not Prophets. ‘Writings’ is a good allpurpose category. Dell speaks of ‘wisdom literature’ as describing ‘a certain corpus of closely defined books in the Bible’.61 The advantage I see in including the Song in a corpus of so-called Wisdom Books is that it gives us a larger context, if we need one, in which to place the Bible’s only love poem in some kind of relation to other books of the Bible rather than isolating it from them. To summarize: Evidence points to the Song as a unity. Scholars who choose to describe it as a collection need to be prepared to demonstrate it. The date of the Song remains an open question, but an increasing body of evidence suggests it may be earlier than previously thought, and a Hellenistic date cannot be assumed simply on the basis of linguistic evidence. Its authorship remains a mystery, and its connections to wisdom are tenuous at best. 61 Dell, ‘Connections to Wisdom?’, 8. In introductions to the Song for a general audience, I have found myself writing, for lack of a better alternative, ‘In the Christian canon it is among the Poetical and Wisdom books’ (J. C. Exum, ‘Introduction and Annotations to the Song of Solomon’, in: M. D. Coogan [ed.], The New Oxford Annotated Bible [NRSV], Oxford 2010, 950), or ‘In the Christian canon it is last among the wisdom books (Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs) and precedes the Prophets (J. C. Exum, ‘Song of Songs’, in: C. A. Newsom, S. H. Ringe, and J. E. Lapsley [eds.], The Women’s Bible Commentary, 3rd edn, Louisville 2012, 247).