Gender in Solomon?s Song of Songs

Discourse Analytical Abduction to a Gynocentric Hypothesis

Haines

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781498288729
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

The thesis shows that the Song of Songs can be read as a circular sequence of sub-poems, that follow logically from one another if they are understood as contributing to two main points, made in a woman's voice. The woman urges men to take romantic initiative to be committed exclusively and for life, and urges women three times to wait until they are approached by such men. If this reading is the best explanation of the text of the Song, then the Song is a unified work centered on a woman singing about human romantic love from a woman's perspective.

1

Introduction

§1 Allegorical or Literal?

“If the hapax legomenon šalhebetyâ in 8:6 refers to the ‘flame of Yah’—yah being a shortened form of the divine name—that no more makes Israel’s god the subject of the poem than ‘strong as death [māwet]’ or ‘flames [rešep] of fire’ makes the Canaanite gods Mot or Resheph its subjects.” — Cheryl Exum1

The traditional, allegorical interpretation of the Song of Songs is well known.2 Despite variations in details of how the allegory is seen to work, traditional readings were united by offering broadly the same answer to the most significant question that can be posed regarding the Song:3 what impact is it supposed to have on those who hear it?4 Commentators across almost two millennia of documented reflection on the Song have considered its import to lie in stimulating its audience’s appreciation of a Creator’s love for his particular redeemed people:5 Israel, or Israel proleptic of its perfection in the church. What more noble theme could the Song address? What else could be its subject?

We will return to the earlier history of interpretation at a later point in this study, because of its value in establishing the ease with which traditional characterizations of femininity were found within the Song,6 and the similar ease with which these were seen to be analogous to aspects of the relationship of creatures to their Creator.7 However, this study—in line with much writing on the Song over the last century or so—is skeptical of any directly theological motivation for its poetic vision.8 To borrow from the terminology of pragmatics, a case will be made that the topic of the Song is not God but man;9 indeed, not merely man but woman.

This is the “gynocentric hypothesis.”10 It is not a new proposal,11 nor yet is it out of fashion. For example, in an essay contributed for Biblical Hebrew and Discourse Linguistics, John Callow asserts: “The Prologue makes it clear from the start that this Song is written from the perspective of the woman, not that of the man.”12 In addition to being written from the woman’s perspective, this study will argue that it is precisely her perspective that is the deliberate focus of the Song.13 This too is not a new proposal, though what is concluded from it, say by Ginsburg or by Clines, differs markedly.

The methodology of this study, like Callow’s, employs standard discourse linguistic techniques to analyze the text of the Song of Songs. In particular, it follows more recent work, like Nicholas Lunn’s application of information theory to biblical Hebrew poetry. In the fifth of Lunn’s suggestions for further study—dating poetic passages and “ascribing a certain style to individual authors”—the Song gets special mention because it “has only a single instance of a defamiliar verbal clause.”14 Perhaps such further study will assist with as-yet-unresolved questions regarding the provenance of the Song: is its linguistic distinctiveness evidence of the idiosyncrasies of a specific author, era, or dialect?15 Those rather exacting questions are not, however, central to this study.

The methodology adopted is ultimately aimed at discovering objective evidence, in the received text of the Song, of a range of discourse features which, when taken together, suggest a specific most plausible explanation for the surface form of its language. As such, they contribute to an abductive—in Pierce’s sense,16 as opposed to being deductive or inductive—argument to an authorial intention to winningly present a distinctively feminine perspective on romantic intimacy.

This brings us back to the most significant question that can be posed regarding the Song: what impact is it supposed to have on those who hear it? Alexander Pope might sympathize with the answers that will be offered in what follows.

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan,

The proper study of mankind is Man.17

Indeed, Pope himself published Characters of Women (1735) only three years after the heroic couplet above. Whether or not Pope, or even the Song, can be accepted as authorities on the character of women, this study naturally abstains from attempting to be such a thing. The Song, though, does appear to presume to instruct the daughters of Jerusalem, at least in how to behave in matters of the heart—do not precipitate love! Quite plausibly, if we take the Shulamite’s man as any generic masculine lover, she also presumes to instruct men—seal your heart! If such readings are correct, the Song explicitly, if a little enigmatically, offers romantic advice addressed both to women and to men,18 as women and men, in distinction to one another.19 The Song sings of gender and sexuality.20 Nonetheless, whatever the Song may or may not be urging on men or women, this study presents linguistic evidence suggesting that whatever it says, it says on the basis of how a woman feels.

Whether the Song’s advice is sound is another matter that goes beyond the scope of this study, as is the question of whether or not the Song is even accurate in its portrayal of “a woman in love.”21 Rather, the study simply proceeds on the assumption that there is a prima facie case that the surface form of much love poetry can be sufficiently explained by authorial intention to represent or elucidate personal and gender-specific romantic sentiments. For example, it will be argued that the Song explores the same emotions as those featured in romantic pop songs, just with a more fulsome explanation than their brief lyrics permit. Yet the emotions in the Song will still be seen to be more straightforward than, say, those explored by Sylvia Plath’s poem in three “decades,” Daddy, which attempted (and perhaps failed) to resolve a suicidal love–hate Electra complex.

Plath herself told us her poem was an “allegory” and about “a girl with an Electra complex. Her father died while she thought he was God.” Plath’s word-associations extrapolate from childhood memories, painted in black and white (and red), phonetically unified by assonance on /u:/, and playing with I–thou pronouns in two tongues (“you” and du and “do”).

In the Song, the Shulamite’s brothers and the abusive watchmen are treated strikingly less scathingly than Plath’s father, Otto, is i...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Recitative
• Gender in Solomon’s Song of Songs
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Literature Review
• Chapter 3: Phillip Roberts
• Chapter 4: Methodology
• Chapter 5: Preludes (Song 1:2—2:7)
• Chapter 6: Spring (Song 2:8‒17)
• Chapter 7: Dream (Song 3:1‒5)
• Chapter 8: Bathsheba (Song 3:6‒11)
• Chapter 9: The First Waṣf (Song 4:1‒7)
• Chapter 10: Consummation (Song 4:8—5:1)
• Chapter 11: Nightmare (Song 5:2—6:3)
• Chapter 12: The Man’s Second Waṣf (Song 6:4–10)
• Chapter 13: Obscurities (Song 6:11–12)
• Chapter 14: The Man’s Third Waṣf (Song 7:1–11)
• Chapter 15: Pivot Piece (Song 7:12—8:4)
• Chapter 16: Love (Song 8:5–8:7)
• Chapter 17: Postscript (Song 8:8–8:14)
• Chapter 18: Da Capo al Fine
• Chapter 19: Support: André LaCocque, Daniel Grossberg, and George Schwab
• Chapter 20: Conclusion: Gender in Solomon’s Song of Songs
• Bibliography