AFTER CUTTING THE STENCILS containing the article "This You Must Believe" in Sky Hook #8, I suddenly decided to do some research on the question of interpreting "The Song of Solomon," the book in the Bible discussed in the article. My discoveries would have somewhat altered the original article, if they had been made before the stenciling had been completed, and in any case they seem interesting enough to fit in this issue as a sequel to "This You Must Believe."
Since "This You Must Believe" concerned itself primarily with the interpretation of "The Song of Songs which is Solomon's" as published in an edition of the Vulgate annotated by Bishop Challoner, I went first to the Catholic Encyclopedia (Robert Appleton Co., 1908). The article on "The Canticle of Canticles" therein (3:302-5) lists various allegorical and symbolical meanings advocated by the Jewish synagogue, by the Catholic church in the time of St. Gregory of Nyssa, etc.; and by various Protestant commentators. The writer, Gerard Gietmann, S. J., feels that allegory in this case is necessary: "As long as the effort is made to follow the thread of an ordinary love-song, so long will it be impossible to give a coherent exposition. . . . The proper connection of scenes and parts can only be found in the realm of the ideal, in allegory. In no other way can the dignity and sanctity befitting the Scriptures be preserved. . . ."
Gietmann's interpretation differs somewhat from Bishop Challoner's (as outlined in "This You Must Believe") but takes essentially the same tack: "By the Spouse should be understood human nature as elected ... and received by God. This is embodied, above all, in the great Church of God upon earth. ... It is plain that the Canticle of Canticles finds its most evident application to the most holy Humanity of Jesus Christ, which is united in the most intimate bond of love with the Godhead, and is absolutely spotless and essentially sanctified. ..."
In the New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (Funk & Wagnalls, 1911), 9:1-4, Conrad von Orelli, PhD, ThD, writes that the Song of Songs is "clearly a love song, but whether to be understood of earthly or spiritual love is the question." After this unpromising start, Orelli proceeds fairly to enumerate various interpretations -- that the Schulamite heroine of the poem is in love, not with King Solomon, but with a shepherd lad of her own home, and the poem demonstrates that "love is unconquerable, inextinguishable, unpurchasable"; that the poem is merely an unconnected anthology of marriage songs having to do with a wedding among peasants in which the bridegroom plays the part of the "king," by which title he is addressed in the week following the nuptials; that the poem is simply a textbook of Palestinian-Israelitic wedding customs; etc.
Orelli concludes: "How the Song is to be understood the last act teaches. It is the love of a bride with its longings and hopes, its search and discovery, its disillusioning and surprises, the pure love which as a divine spark suffers nothing unpure, and through its might overcomes all earthly obstacles, set forth here in rare completeness. ... This object is in itself not unworthy of the Bible, all the more that the opposition to a simply sensual or sham affection works out in the poem. Were there not something lofty and mysterious in the love of a bride for her husband it could not elsewhere be used as the picture of the holiest relations."
The Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics (Scribner, 1908), 1:331, mentions various people of the past -- Bernard of Clairvaux, Thomas Aquinas, Luther, etc. -- who have interpreted the Canticles allegorically, but notes, "Generally speaking, the allegorical method has in modern times fallen into disrepute."
A work compiled by the Anglican church, The Holy Bible ... With An Explanatory and Critical Commentary (John Murray, 1882), interprets the Song of Songs, proceeding "on the assumption that the primary subject and occasion of the poem was a real historical event ... the marriage of Solomon with a Shepherd-maiden of Northern Palestine ..." Though quoting the very same blurbs at the head of each chapter that appeared in the Vulgate edition I mentioned in "This You Must Believe," the annotations here, by the Rev. T. L. Kingsbury, M. A., explain the passages somewhat differently from those of Bishop Challoner. For instance, chapter VII, verse 7, "This thy stature is like to a palm tree, and thy breasts to clusters of grapes. ..." is said to mean, strangely enough, "The King now addresses the Bride, comparing her to palm, vine, and apple tree for nobility of form and pleasantness of fruit. ..."
On the other hand, the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia (Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Inc., 1943), 9:648, reports that the Song of Songs "is read by many pious Jews every Friday morning, because of its religious idealism as interpreted by tradition, Israel becoming here the bridegroom, and his bride being the Sabbath." The article continues: "So profoundly devotional has the book been considered throughout the ages that the ancient rabbis found an acrostic for the month Elul (the period of penitent preparation for the high holy days) in the phrase "Ani ledodi vedodi li" ("I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine") since the letters Aleph, Lamed, Vav, Lemed, form the Hebrew word Elul, and the passage signifies allegorically, if not mystically, that Israel is the beloved of God."
The Jewish Encyclopedia (Funk & Wagnalls, 1905-09), 11:466-7, in an article by Emil G. Hirsch, PhD, LLD, says, "The oldest known interpretation of the Song (induced by the demand for an ethical and religious element in its content) is allegorical: the Midrash and the Targum represent it as depicting the relations between God and Israel. The allegorical conception of it passed over into the Christian church and has been elaborated by a long line of writers ... the deeper meaning being assumed to be the relation between God or Jesus and the Church or the individual soul. The literal interpretation of the poem as simply a eulogy of married love had its representatives in early times ... but it is only in the last hundred years that this interpretation has practically ousted the allegorical. The Song is now taken, almost universally, to be the celebration of a marriage, there being, in fact, no hint of an allegory in the text."
Dr. Hirsch's article concludes: "[The Song] is a collection of pieces in praise of the physical delights of wedded love." Amen! It is as simple as that, but Dr. Hirsch was the first of all the writers I consulted to mention the fact. The others were too busy -- as one FAPA member, who shall be nameless here but not unidentifiable, remarked after reading "This You Must Believe" -- "turning a pillow conversation into a chalk-talk for God."
All of which is just another proof, if one were needed, that the race of fugghead is legion.
THE END
Page scans provided by Judy Bemis
Updated May 17, 2003. If you have a comment about these web pages please send a note to the Fanac Webmaster. Thank you.