Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 04.djvu/192

* CANTICLES. 156 CANTICLES. Sank. xii. It is evident that the allegorical as well as the literal interpretation was in vogue in the First Century a.d. Probably the ascription of Canticles to Solomon, the philosopher par excellence, caused the conviction that it must have a profound significance; and the allegori- cal method of the day led men to find in it a description of Jehovah's love for His people Israel. This interpretation passed from the !>yiiagogue to the Church, with the modification tluit the bridegroom became Christ and the bride either the Church or the individual soul. Origen understood the poem very much as Akiba had, and Cocceius found in it the history of the Church down to the Synod of Dort in a.d. 1018, just as the Targumist had found the his- tory of Israel down to the exile of B.C. 586. Some adherents of this allegorical interpretation, sudi as Vatablc, Bossuet, and Lowth. assiuned a double sense, a description of earthly love at the same time intended to be typical of spiritual love. In defense of this view, it has been argued that the poem may have precisely the mystical sense that has been claimed for the love-songs of Hafiz and .Jayadeva's Gitagovinda. It is not al- together inconceivable that- a work which has furnished so rich nourishment to Christian mysticism itself may be the product of a similar Jewish mysticism. But where the mystical ten- dency and the allegorical method were most in evidence, in Philo's works, there is no trace of Canticles or anything like it. At the present time there is a practical agreement among scholars that the love depicted is solely that of man and woman. The first Christian interpreter who discarded all allegorizing was Theodore of ilopsuestia (died 429). For this he was condemned in 551. Luther, curiously enough, looked upon Canticles as a political allegory teaching obedience to civil authority. The secular character of the poem was fully recognized by Sebastien Chateillon (1544). For this offense he was driven out of (Jeneva by Calvin. Luis de Leon (died 1591) was incarcerated by the Inquisition five years for suggesting in his Latin translation a similar view. Hugo Grotius, somewhat timidly, and Jean le Clerc, more decidedly, maintained that earthly love was depicted in the song. Observing what he deemed the immorality of some of the lyrics. J. D. Jlichaelis threw the book out of the canon, and J. S. Seniler likewise questioned its canonicity. The conception of canonical author- ity prevalent in their time has now been general- ly abandoned : and the highly spiced descriptions of sexual passion have been justified, first by the supposed purpose of the author to protest against Solomon's harem life, and then by the assump- tion that wedded love is portrayed. But is this poem of earthly love a drama or a mere collection of lyrics? And is the love de- scribed that of husband and wife, or of men and women who follow the promptings of passion re- gardless of social conventions? .Already Origen says of Canticles, "Dramatis in modum mihi videtur." Cornelius a Lapide (Van den Steen, died 10.37) divided the poem into five acts. Lowth (175.11 regarded it as an imperfect drama lack- ing a regular plot. .J. Wachter (1722) and J. F. Jacobi (1771) sought to indicate a plot. While the former made Solomon and the Sliu- lamite the chief characters, the latter discovered in addition a shepherd lover. Dclitzsch (1851-75) gave the classical expression to what has been called the 'king theory,' while the 'shepherd theory' was especially developed by ellhusen (1780), Staudlin (1792), and Ewald"(1826, 1839, 1842). Through Ewald, this theory became widely accepted. Biittcher (1850) even more de- cidedly made the poem a modern operetta enacted on the stage. liitzig (1855) discovered Solo- mon's wife, and Uirzel (1888) was able to find two slu-plierds and two shepherdesses. The latest critic who lias accepted this view is Duhm (1902). He regards Canticles as an operetta resembling the mediieval miracle plays, and divides it into twenty lyrieo-dramatie passages. The plot is simple; true love wins the day over all the ell'orts of Solomon to part the lovers and make the maid of Sliaron his favorite wife. The songs are sung partly by individuals, such as the Shulamite. Solomon, and the shepherd, partly by choruses of harem-ladies, women of Zion, brides- maids, and kinsfolk. Several objections have been urged against this theory. The ancient Hebrews possessed no theatre, and the Semitic race has produced no great dramatic genius; there is no intelligible plot in Canticles; there is a lack of verisimilitude in the King's char- acter and behavior: there is something absurd in the idea that the heroine's answers to Solomon are in reality addresses to her absent lover; the necessity of putting the Shulamite to sleep on the stage, to dream through entire scenes, is not less embarrassing. Bossuet (1693) and Lowth thought that Can- ticles might have been written for a royal wed- ding, and divided it into sections corresponding to the days of the feast. Renan (1809) made the important suggestion that it may be the libretto of a simple play performed privately at some rural wedding, where the singers took the parts of Solomon's guards, ladies of Jeru- salem, and others. To this view he was led by the accounts of Schefer of such performances seen by him at Damietta and in Syria. Similar observations made by Wetzstein in the neighbor- hood of Damascus caused this scholar to think that Canticles is not a dream, but a collection of wedding songs, intended to set a standard of decency and good taste for wedding poets to follow. Certain features of the Syrian wedding, such as the bridal couple playing king and queen, the sword-dance of the bride, and the irasf or song in praise of the bride, particularly im- pressed him (1S73). Wetzstein's view was ac- cepted bv Stade (1887), and particularlv elabo- rated by'Budde (1894-98), Siegfried (1898), and Cheyne (1899), who strongly emphasize that the poems throughout describe wedded love. This theory, though more probable than the earlier views, is not wholly free from objection. It Is difficult to see how a natural exegesis can find wedded love described in scenes that present the husband ex hi/pothrsi. as knocking at his wife's window and being refused admittance on the ground that she is not dressed, or the heroine as roaming through the streets of the city at midnight in search of him. or expressing a wish that iie were her brother that she might kiss him without being reproved. The necessity of resorting to dreams is again suspicious. According to the theory of Herder (1778), ac- cepted by Ei<hhorn. Cocthe, De Wette, Diipke, .Magnus. Dicstel, and others. Canticles is simply an anthology of lyrical forms describing the love