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The Subversive Theology in the Song of Songs

Lee, You-Mee 1

1루터대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Although the Song of Songs(SoS) is included in the canon, the book is filled with the erotic imagery but is NOT mentioning God and theological themes. This being so, allegorical interpretation dominated the reading of the SoS for ages. Allegorical interpretation helped to read the SoS as a religious book, but it ignored what the text said and made arbitrary interpretations. Against allegorical approach, literal approaches made an appearance. They read literally the erotic language of the SoS. But they faced with the problem of the canonicity. This thesis attempts to supplement these approaches’ faults. The SoS was not originally a non-religious love song but a religious one. At the same time, I emphasize that it is secular love song(not allegory). First of all, I assert that the SoS is not a anthology but a love song which has an author(poet). Through a literary device ‘refrain’, I show the unity of the SoS. The SoS apparently sings the human love. But the way of expression about love is different with other books in the canon. The poet attempts the reversal of the traditional views, and then suggests a new theological interpretation. The Old Testament was surely written in the patriarchal circumstance. So the Old Testament tradition perceived the man-woman relationship as a hierarchical structure. And the relationship was applied to God-human(Israel) relationship(esp. the Prophets). The human love and sex/gender motifs were used for the religious motifs. But the poet intended to the demythologization of human love and attempted ‘a new theological work.’ The poet reinterpreted the love, body, gender/sex, and authority in the subversive way. The poet ultimately recovered the meaning of the essential human love and sex/gender. The SoS is the wisdom literature. This book does not deal with the traditional theological themes, but it is concerned with the universal oder and principle(creation theology). That is the characteristic of the wisdom literature. And its subversive feature is analogous with the Job and Ecclesiastes in the wisdom literature. Finally, The SoS is simply not a song of human love. Rather, it contains the profound theological consideration about the Human through the love theme.

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* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.
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