Sacred Trees and Enclosed Gardens

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lincoln Taiz ◽  
Lee Taiz
Keyword(s):  
Food Chain ◽  
Song Of Songs ◽  
Love Poetry ◽  
Date Palms ◽  
Erotic Poetry ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Artificial Pollination ◽  
Second Millennium Bce ◽  
Agricultural Food ◽  
The Erotic

“Sacred Trees and Enclosed gardens” discusses myths, poetry and art in ancient Babylonia, Egypt and the Levant as they relate to sex in plants. By the second millennium BCE, Babylonians had recognized dioecism in date palms and had established laws governing the practice of artificial pollination, but this recognition was never extended to plants in general. Instead, agricultural abundance came to be identified with the sexuality of powerful goddesses. Date symbolism suggesting the method of artificial pollination is evident in the jewelry of Queen Puabi of Ur. The Warka Vase, illustrating the agricultural food chain, culminates with representations of Inanna and the king whose sacred marriage ritual insures the prosperity of the kingdom. Egyptian tree goddesses were widely represented. The erotic poetry of Mesopotamian agricultural rituals persists in Egyptian love poetry, and continues in the Biblical “Song of Songs”. In the Bible, the vegetation goddess Asherah is mentioned forty times.

Sex, Spirituality, and Pre-Modern Readings of the Song of Songs

Horizons ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas F. Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Song Of Songs ◽  
Course Content ◽  
Erotic Poetry ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
Christian Thought ◽  
The Last Two Millennia ◽  
The Erotic

ABSTRACTWhile unfamiliar to many today, the Song of Songs was once one of the most frequently interpreted books of the Bible. This article seeks to counter the current lack of familiarity by highlighting the significance for the classroom of pre-modern exegesis of the Song. As course content, it provides a starting point from which to examine Christian thought and practice over the last two millennia. In particular, it supplies evidence that Christians (and Jews) have expressed some of their most profound insights into spirituality in terms of the erotic poetry of the Song. This essay concludes with an examination of method. How can pre-modern exegesis contribute to contemporary debates about interpretation, particularly of biblical texts?

scholarly journals Tafsir Alegoris, Konstruksi Teologis, dan Unsur Erotis dalam Kitab Kidung Agung

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-256
Author(s):  
Agetta Putri Wijaya
Keyword(s):  
Human Sexuality ◽  
Song Of Songs ◽  
Constructive Theology ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Erotic

Song of Songs is afforded relatively rare attention in church, where an allegorical mode of reading often continues to serve as the default interpretative strategy for examining this particular book of the Bible. And this remains the case, despite the development of numerous other approaches that can better account for elements of eroticism as contained in that book. In this essay, discursive problematics arising from the interpretation of Song of Songs are considered in detail, in order to ascertain the reason for the church's aversion toward using some such exegetical method that would be more attuned to the erotic elements within Song of Songs. One's own willingness to be open to such erotic elements in Song of Songs may even assist in bringing the church to realize the riches to be found therein. Such riches may then also serve as basis for a more progressive constructive theology concerning human sexuality. As such, the church may thus regard Song of Songs as its biblical warrant for constructing a theology that regards sexuality in a more positive manner.

Modern Midrash: The Biblical Canon and Modern Literature

AJS Review ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gershon Shaked
Keyword(s):  
Song Of Songs ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
Literary Value ◽  
Pressure Groups ◽  
The Bible

Canonization of the Bible resulted from a consensus of those to whom it was addressed and a ruling group of religious elites that established its sanctity. They declared that “Torah was given to Moses at Sinai” and valued it above and beyond its literary value. The process of canonization was not a simple one. Several books were included only after struggles among various pressure groups. For example: “At first, Proverbs, Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes were considered non-canonical because they consisted of parables, but later the men of the Great Assembly interpreted them.” (ءAvot dءRabbi Natan, 1). Further: “The sages wished to exclude Ecclesiastes because it contained inconsistencies, but they included it because it begins and ends with teachings of Torah” (Shabbat, 30:b).

Cenzura w Biblii

2018 ◽  
pp. 166-181
Author(s):  
Marcin Majewski ◽  
Artur Sporniak ◽  
Teresa Szostek ◽  
Michał Czajkowski
Keyword(s):  
Song Of Songs ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Holy Ghost ◽  
Small Letter ◽  
Bible Translation ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Original Meaning ◽  
Correct Translation

The article focuses on the analysis of an interview regarding Bible translation and related censorship. The author comments on the statements of one of the interlocutors, adding her own insights and analyses. Bible translators make certain parts of the text more approachable, as was the case with the refrain to Song of Songs, which, in most translations, mentions “embracing” while the protestant Bible contains the correct translation, i.e. “caressing.” Similarly, translators correct the Bible, as they have a different notion of what a sacral text should look like. For example, they introduce neutral phrases instead of offensive words. In Czajkowski’s opinion, translators often censor the Bible, trying to make the text less blunt. However, sometimes discrepancies are a result of not understanding the original text. Not always are these differences a consequence of the translator’s work, though. It is clearly visible e.g. in the case of “pneuma,” a word which can be translated into ghost or soul, spelled with a small letter, or the Holy Ghost. The author does not support the so-called “inclusive” translation. The inspired text should not be changed. Such changes can be replaced with explanations or comments. In order to discover the original meaning of the Holy Scripture, one can compare one of the Polish translations with translations into other foreign languages or other translations into Polish.

The Song of Songs and the Liturgy of the velatio in the Fourth Century: from Literary Metaphor to Liturgical Reality

1999 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 18-23
Author(s):  
Nathalie Henry
Keyword(s):  
Young Women ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Song Of Songs ◽  
Literary Metaphor ◽  
The Erotic

Jerome and Ambrose often quote from the Song of Songs in their ascetic treatises. The writings of Ambrose on virginity contain no fewer than 130 quotations from or allusions to the poem. Jerome’s letter 22 to the young virgin Eustochium includes around thirty references to it. It seems paradoxical for the Fathers to use the erotic images of the Song of Songs to encourage young women to keep their virginity. How can we explain this phenomenon?Were the Fathers simply seduced by the nuptial images of the poem? If so, Ambrose and Jerome were not the first. Before them Methodius of Olympus and Athanasius had already applied the Song of Songs to virginal life: Methodius in his Symposium and Athanasius in his letters to virgins. Another possibility is that Ambrose and Jerome quote from the Song of Songs because the poem was used in the consecration of virgins in their day. This is the question which is discussed below.

scholarly journals "Solomon's Salacious Song": Foucault's Author Function and the Early Christian Interpretation of the Canticum Canticorum

1998 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew S. Jacobs
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Song Of Songs ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Canonical Texts ◽  
Interpretive Mode ◽  
Ancient Christianity ◽  
The Erotic

AbstractThe transformation of the erotic Song of Songs into a mystical tract on the soul's love for Christ was surely one of the great exegetical feats of late ancient Christianity. Recent work on the politics of meaning leads us to interrogate more closely the processes by which early Christian exegetes achieved that feat, and how their interpretations encoded and produced particular forms of socially mediated power and knowledge. Michel Foucault has proposed for modern literary criticism the interpretive mode of the "author function," by which literary critics can domesticate or reject a text that is potentially transgressive. This "author function" supplied one method by which difficult canonical texts, like the Song of Songs, were tamed, and furthermore produced authoritative (and authorial) meaning that mediated contested boundaries of Christian cultural identity.

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