How Song of Songs Came to Us

No one knows who first sang these songs. What survives is the book, four fragmentary copies from Qumran, translations from antiquity, and complete Hebrew manuscripts from the 10th and 11th centuries.

A. Ancient background

Love songs with alternating voices, "sister/brother" endearments, gardens and praise of the body survive from New Kingdom Egypt (Papyrus Chester Beatty I, Papyrus Harris 500, the Cairo jar); Sumerian and Akkadian love poetry (Inanna and Dumuzi; Nabu and Tashmetu) offers more distant parallels. These are comparable texts, not sources, and they do not date the Song.

B. Composition and collection

The heading links the Song with Solomon; the Hebrew has late features (she-, Aramaisms, Persian pardes, possibly Greek appiryon) alongside old place names (Tirzah). Models: one poet, an edited anthology, wedding songs, or a unified poem without plot. History can show the language's age and the poem's design; it cannot name the author or recover a performance.

C. Hebrew manuscripts

Four Hebrew manuscripts from Qumran: 4Q106 (4QCant-a), 4Q107 (4QCant-b) and 4Q108 (4QCant-c) from Cave 4, and 6Q6 (6QCant) from Cave 6, all reported to date from the late 1st century BC to the 1st century AD. E. Tov (1995) argued that 4Q106 and 4Q107 are abbreviated texts: 4Q106 is reported to pass from 4:7 directly to 6:11, without 4:8–6:10, and 4Q107 to lack other verses. 6Q6 preserves parts of 1:1–7 (DJD III). Exact contents and readings are a C check (S-C04). The medieval Masoretic codices fix vowels and accents; the Aleppo Codex (c. 930) breaks off at Song 3:11, so the Leningrad Codex (1008) is the oldest complete Hebrew witness. The library's Hebrew is the Westminster Leningrad Codex.

D. Greek and other versions

The Greek is literal; most differences are vowel readings, names translated as words, and interpretation (see the Greek investigation). Later Greek translators (Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion) survive in fragments of Origen's Hexapla. Jerome translated from Hebrew (Vulgate); the Syriac Peshitta is close to the Hebrew; the Aramaic Targum is a long allegorical paraphrase, an interpretation rather than a text-witness. Giguet's French in the site's library is a translation of a printed Greek text (D check only).

E. Recognition and placement

Mishnah Yadayim 3:5 defends the Song's holiness; Rabbi Akiva calls it the Holy of Holies. In Jewish Bibles it is the first of the Five Scrolls, read at Passover. In Christian Bibles it follows Ecclesiastes among the poetic books. Canon recognition was a process; a single meeting did not "create" it.

F. Interpretive history

Jewish allegory (God and Israel: Targum, Midrash, Rashi; philosophical and Kabbalistic readings); Christian allegory (Christ and the church: Origen; Christ and the soul: Gregory of Nyssa, Bernard, John of the Cross; Marian readings); literal readings (Theodore of Mopsuestia; Ibn Ezra's plain sense; modern scholarship); attention to women's voices and gender in recent study. The date of a commentary is not the date of the poem.

G. Why editions differ

Rare words and plant names; Greek and Latin vowel readings and name translations; uncertain speakers; possible Qumran abridgments; the chapter break between 6:13 and 7:1; editorial speaker labels and headings in modern Bibles. A footnote that says "Greek reads…" does not always mean a different Hebrew text.

H. What remains unknown

The author or authors; the date of composition; the place and setting of performance; whether the lovers are historical; the sequence of scenes; exact identifications of many plants and gems; the original speaker divisions; the meaning of several rare words (appiryon, Ammi-nadib, Bether, Baal-hamon); and whether shalhevetyah names God.

Open checks (C)

S-C02 Hebrew against a named critical edition (including the shalhevetyah word division); S-C03 Greek against a critical Greek edition and the codices' speaker notes; S-C04 the Qumran manuscripts against DJD XVI and DJD III; S-C05 Egyptian songs against published editions; S-C10 dated reception claims checked in the Targum, Midrash Rabbah and patristic texts. Until they close, the volume is built, not research-certified.