Song of Songs
About this date: Dates are broad scholarly estimates of composition or final editing, not dates of the events narrated. Traditional attributions and scholarly assessments can differ.
Song of Songs is a collection of love poetry with alternating voices, desire, absence, searching, and delight. Jewish and Christian readers have also read it figuratively; those receptions should be identified without denying the poems' human love language.
Historical context
The title associates the collection with Solomon, but attribution and date remain debated. Later allegorical and mystical readings are part of the work's reception, not proof of a single uncontested original referent.
Key points
- Attend to changes of speaker and poetic imagery rather than forcing a continuous modern plot.
- The beloved's search and the praise of enduring love recur across the poems.
- Cyril of Jerusalem applies the search imagery to the resurrection narratives; he is making a Christian typological reading.
Scripture
- Song of Songs 2:8-17 — The lover's arrival and the invitation into spring present desire through landscape and voice.
- Song of Songs 3:1-5 — A night search for the beloved later receives spiritual interpretations.
- Song of Songs 8:6-7 — The poem describes love's force and resistance to purchase.
- John 20:11-18 — Compare Mary's search at the tomb with Cyril's later use of the Song; John does not explicitly quote Song 3 here.
Primary sources
Cyril introduces the tomb scene:
Cyril reads the Song's search for the beloved through the women seeking the risen Jesus. This identifies a fourth-century Christian reception, not an explicit quotation in John's Gospel.
But before He entered through the closed doors, the Bridegroom and Suitor of souls was sought by those noble and brave women.
Passage context and translation
In resurrection instruction Cyril reads the Song's search for the beloved through the Gospel accounts of the women and Mary seeking Jesus. This is Cyril's Christian spiritual reading, not a claim that John explicitly quotes the Song or that the love poems lack a human literary sense.
Sources and further reading
- Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles: canonical books and Apocrypha
- Catholic Catechism §120: canon and book list
- Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lecture XIV.12-13
- Orthodox Church in America: canon of Scripture
- Orthodox Church in America: Old Testament historical books
- Song of Songs: complete public-domain WEB text
- USCCB Bible introductions: historical and literary notes