ch an exegesis to Canticles is to violate one of the first
principles of reasonable interpretation. True allegories are never
without internal marks of their allegorical design. The language of
symbol is not so perfect that a long chain of spiritual ideas can be
developed without the use of a single spiritual word or phrase; and even
were this possible it would be false art in the allegorist to hide away
his sacred thoughts behind a screen of sensuous and erotic imagery, so
complete and beautiful in itself as to give no suggestion that it is
only the vehicle of a deeper sense. Apart from tradition, no one, in the
present state of exegesis, would dream of allegorizing poetry which in
its natural sense is so full of purpose and meaning, so apt in
sentiment, and so perfect in imagery as the lyrics of Canticles. We are
not at liberty to seek for allegory except where the natural sense is
incomplete. This is not the case in the Song of Solomon. On the
contrary, every form of the allegorical interpretation which has been
devised carries its own condemnation in the fact that it takes away from
the artistic unity of the poem and breaks natural sequences of
thought.[1] The allegorical interpretation of the Song of Solomon bad
its rise in the very same conditions which forced a deeper sense, now
universally discarded, upon so many other parts of scripture. Yet
strangely enough there is no evidence that the Jews of Alexandria
extended to the book their favourite methods of interpretation. The
arguments which have been adduced to prove that the Septuagint
translation implies an allegorical exegesis are inadequate;[2] and Philo
does not mention the book. Nor is there any allusion to Canticles in the
New Testament. The first trace of an allegorical view identifying Israel
with the "spouse" appears to be in the Fourth Book of Ezra, near the
close of the 1st Christian century (v. 24, 26; vii. 26). Up to this time
the canonicity of the Canticles was not unquestioned; and the final
decision as to the sanctity of the book, so energetically carried
through by R. Aqiba, when he declared that "the whole world is not worth
the day on which the Song of Songs was given to Israel; for all the
scriptures (or Hagiographa) are holy, but the Canticles most holy," must
be understood as being at the same time a victory of the allegorical
interpretation over the last remains of a view which regarded the poem
as simply erotic.[3]

The form in which the