The Song of Songs

"All the world is not worth the day that the Song of Songs was given to Israel; all the Kethubhim are holy but the Song of Songs is the holy of holies." Mishnah Yadayim 3.5 So Rabbi Akiva aptly testified to The Song's unique and compelling scriptural witness, as early as the second century. Yet, one of the most enticing realities of The Song's two thousand year interpretive history remains the inability for its readers to agree upon a rationale for The Song's appropriate inclusion within the canon. Each interpreter struggles to provide a strategy that illuminates The Song's relationship to other scriptural texts. Like Jacob at Jabbok, scholars' efforts are intense. But remaining questions continually lure others into their own tussling match with The Song. This course examines The Song of Songs' text, and the wide range of interpretative approaches applied to it, including midrashic, allegorical, linguistic, comparative, ideological, form critical, and feminist hermeneutical strategies. Students will become more attuned to the sophisticated and dynamic details of The Song's "text" itself; allowing for the subsequent identification of the various factors at play within the proposals of the exegetes and interpreters we encounter. Careful attention to each scholar's choice of translation from the various English translations of The Song's canonized Hebrew (Masoretic), Latin (Vulgate), and Greek (Septuagint) texts will be incorporated into our exploration of the scholar's findings.