In modern times, the Song of Songs, otherwise known as the Song of Solomon, has come under renewed and vigorous scrutiny. S. D. Goitein, a female biblical scholar, was the pioneer in arguing for a woman's authorship of the text of this small but beautiful biblical book.
Arguments for a Woman's Authorship of the Song of Songs
Most of the book is, as stated, told from a woman's point of view, and much less than half is told from a male point of view. Yet while it is true that it is not as patriarchal as the major part of the Hebrew Bible/ Old Testament, traces of a male dominated culture remain--however, they are pictured from a woman's point of view.
Some of the arguments can get quite technical. Yet it is striking that although the word "mother" occurs repeatedly, the word "father" is completely absent. This is particularly telling in that the Hebrew term for "household" in the rest of the Hebrew Bible is "house of the father." In this song cycle the term is absent, but it does speak of the house of the mother.
In Genesis, it says in the scene where Adam and Eve are expelled from the garden, and the woman's lot is pictured, that her "desire will be for her husband." In the Song of Songs, in what might be an explicit reference to the Book of Genesis, "I am my love, and his desire is for me."
Aside: The Book of J
Some years back, literary critic Harold Bloom won fame by contending that large parts of the Torah (also known as the Pentateuch or Five Books of Moses) were written by a woman. This book won many laymen to his point of view, but precious few biblical scholars. I personally was present at a lecture presented by Prof. David Sperling of the Reform Jewish seminary, HUC-JIR in New York, in which he tore "The Book of J" into shreds.
More Arguments
One of the compelling arguments for female authorship of the Song of Songs is the way a woman's sexuality is portrayed. It is depicted both in metaphor and in a direct way. There is even one woman scholar, Carey Ellen Walsh, who believes that a scene in the Song of Songs describes a woman's "wet dream." While in my opinion she is reading it into the Song of Songs and not out of the text, it is vivid testimony to how the text of the Song of Songs affects women as opposed to men. No male scholar ever saw it that way, and to the best of my knowledge, neither did any other women scholars.
Here is my translation of the passage:
Chapter 5
2. I was sleeping but my mind was awake.
Hark! My love is knocking.
"Open for me my sister, my beloved,..."
4. My love stretched his hand through the door, and my innermost parts moaned for him.
5. I stood up to open for my love and my hands dripped myrrh, my fingers [dripped] liquid myrrh on the handle of the lock.
It's great poetry about a woman's arousal (to say nothing of allegorical, typological, or spiritual interpretations), but although the woman is asleep at the start of the passage, it is a reasonable assumption that she is only dozing, and that the knock at the door has awakened her fully. So the "wet dream" interpretation seems forced. In any case I leave it to the reader to draw his or her own conclusions.
Arguments against Female Authorship of the Song of Songs
A reader has only to experience Shakespeare or Tolstoy to see that men can create real women characters. Given the fact that the Song of Songs was written by a great artist, it is possible that the artist was a man, or possible even that this small biblical book is the product of some kind of collaboration between a woman and a man.
Women poets are rare in antiquity, although there is in Greek literature the example of the woman poet Sappho. It is true that the Song of Songs begins by saying that it is Solomon's, but modern scholars are quick to say that it may mean only that the poem was dedicated to Solomon. Clearly, the writer was assumed to be a man for thousands of years.
Conclusion
There is no way to know for sure whether a woman actually wrote this biblical book, but in my opinion a woman certainly had some say in its contents. Yet in the end one can only speculate.
Sources
Brenner, A., ed. A Feminist Companion to the Song of Songs (JSOT Press, Sheffield, England: 1993)
The Koren Bible (Hebrew), (Koren Publishing, Jerusalem: 2007)
Walsh, C. E., Exquisite Desire: Religion, The Erotic, and the Song of Songs (Fortress Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota: 2000)
Philip Stern - I am a writer and a biblical scholar. I graduated from New York University in 1989, and in 1991 my revised and improved dissertation came ...
