Let us suppose that the Song of Songs was never included in
Scripture, that there were only 65 books in the canon. Let us further suppose
that a discovery was made in modern Jordan in the early 1950s, in which a
number of scrolls were found. Among them was a collection, or what appeared to
be a collection, of occasionally erotic poetry. We could tell from the language
that it was written in, and from some of the names used, that it was of late
Israelite or early Jewish origin.
We would then begin to compare it to other ancient
literature, because that is what we would have; simply ancient literature. But the
essential question would be, to what do we compare it? We might compare it to
collections of Syrian wedding festival songs, just because of location, and the
occasionally erotic character of the poems. But there is nothing specific about
the material that says wedding. Or we might compare it to Akkadian hymns to
Tammuz, though there is nothing in the collection that particularly says a hymn
to a god. Or we might compare it to collections of ancient Egyptian love
poetry, because the content of the collection we've found is very close to the
content of some of those Egyptian poems. But we would do those comparisons
because the collection we found would not come with a particular context, and
if we were to rightly understand it, we would need to find the proper context
for interpreting it.
But the situation with the Song of Songs is completely
different from that of our hypothetical find. The Song of Songs comes to us
with a known and certain context. It is part of the collection of sacred
scripture. Thus, it is sacred scripture itself that should provide the context
for our interpretation of the Song. We don’t know what connection, if any, the
Song might have to Syrian wedding festivals. We don’t know what connection, if
any, the Song might have to Akkadian hymns to Tammuz or Egyptian love poetry.
In fact, what we do know is that to compare the Song to those literatures is to
take the Song out of the context which has been provided for it and put it in a
new and alien context. To take the Song away from the context of the larger
body of scripture and to put it in the context of the literature of some other
nation from some other time is almost to guarantee that we will misinterpret
the Song, because we will have removed the Song from its proper interpretive
context.
In some sense, it doesn't matter where in the canon of scripture the Song is found. In our English versions, it is part of the poetic
books. In Hebrew texts it is part of the collection called the Writings. But
regardless of where it is put, the larger context for the interpretation of the
Song has already been given us. It is part of the sacred scriptures, and those
scriptures give us the framework for interpreting the Song. If we take a statement
about bases out of a chemistry textbook, and put it in a baseball book, we will
surely misinterpret it. In like manner, if we take the Song out of the context
of Scripture and put it in some other ancient literary context, we will surely
misinterpret it, because we have put it in the wrong context.
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