Sights and Sounds of the Song of Songs
The Hebrew Bible contains a particularly puzzling little book known as the Song of Songs. It is also known as the Song of Solomon or as Canticles. The book appears to be a collection of poetry on the theme of human love. It is often frankly erotic. The poems typically presuppose two primary figures: a male lover and a female lover. Like much poetry, its polysemy makes it both evocative and enigmatic. At some early point before our first explicit citation of it, it was seen as an allegory for God's love. It was "the most frequently interpreted book of medieval Christianity" (Ann Matter) and it inspired a great many medieval Jewish commentaries as well. The Song of Songs has played a fascinating role in Western culture. It has been a test case and a workshop for allegorical method. It has been a mainstay of asceticism and an impetus for mysticism.
This page presents a sampling of sights and sounds from the Song of Songs.
Sights and Sounds of Song of Songs
- Historiated Initial from Song of Songs manuscript
- Rubrics in Song of Songs in Codex Sinaiticus
- Chanting in the Ashkenazi Tradition
- Chanting in the Sephardic Tradition
- Chanting in the Yemenite Tradition
- Hebrew Text with English translation and Sephardic chanting in mp3 format (Mechon Mamre)
- Discography of Song of Songs Music in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe
- Song 2:16 ("I am my beloved's and he is mine")
Material Related to Song of Songs
- Lost Keys: Text and Interpretation in Old Greek Song of Songs and its Earliest Manuscript Witnesses (my dissertation in Penn's Scholarly Commons)
- Song of Songs: History of Interpretation (my annotated bibliography)
- The Song of Songs: Theme and Variations (my course on the history of interpretation from ancient times to modern)
- Song of Songs Interpretation Samples (Alan Humm)
- NRSV translation (from Oremus Bible Browser)
- KJV translation
- Parallel Aligned Hebrew and Greek Text (key to coding)
- The Aramaic Targum of Song of Songs (in English translation)
- Bibliography of English Translations and Commentaries
- Garden Enclosed (Judith Ernst)
- 1599 Geneva Bible Notes
- Exposition by Matthew Henry (1662-1714)
- Interpreting the Song of Songs:
The Paradox of Spiritual and Sensual Love by Carl W. Ernst