Bibles and
in German MSS. it is the first of these because it is read at the
Passover, which is the first great feast of the sacred year of the Jews.

No part of the Bible has called forth a greater diversity of opinions
than the Song of Solomon, and this for two reasons. In the first place,
the book holds so unique a position in the Old Testament, that the
general analogy of Hebrew literature is a very inadequate key to the
verbal difficulties, the artistic structure, and the general conception
and purpose of the poem. In point of language the departures from
ordinary Hebrew are almost always in the direction of Aramaic. Many
forms unique in Biblical Hebrew are at once explained by the Aramaic
dialects, but not a few are still obscure. The philological difficulties
of the book are, however, less fundamental than those which lie in the
unique character of the Song of Solomon in point of artistic form, and
in the whole atmosphere of thought and feeling in which it moves. Even
in these respects it is not absolutely isolated. Parallels to the
peculiar imagery may be found in the book of Hosea, in Ezekiel xvi. and
xxiii. and above all in the 45th Psalm; but such links of union to the
general mass of the Old Testament literature are too slight to be of
material assistance in the solution of the literary problem of the book.
Here, again, as in the lexical difficulties already referred to, we are
tempted or compelled to argue from the distant and insecure analogy of
other Eastern literatures, or are thrown back upon traditions of
uncertain origin and ambiguous authority.

The power of tradition has been the second great source of confusion of
opinion about the Song of Solomon. To tradition we owe the title, which
apparently indicates Solomon as the author and not merely as the subject
of the book. The authority of titles in the Old Testament is often
questionable, and in the present case it is certain on linguistic
grounds that the title is not from the hand that wrote the poem; while
to admit that it gives a correct account of the authorship is to cut
away at one stroke all the most certain threads of connexion between the
book and our historical knowledge of the Old Testament people and
literature.

To tradition, again, we owe the prejudice in favour of an allegorical
interpretation, that is, of the view that from verse to verse the Song
sets forth the history of a spiritual and not merely of an earthly love.
To apply su