Explore metaphors in the exquisite and enigmatic poetry of Song of Songs One of the chief difficulties in interpreting the Song's lyrics is the unusual imagery used to depict the lovers' bodies. Why is the maiden's hair compared to a flock of goats (4:1), the man’s cheeks likened to garden beds of spice (5:13), and the eyes of both lovers described as doves (4:1; 5:12)? While scholars speculate on the significance of these images, a systematic inquiry into the Song's body metaphors is curiously absent. Based on insights from cognitive linguistics, this study incorporates biblical and comparative data to uncover the meaning of these metaphors surveying literature in the eastern Mediterranean (and beyond) that shares a similar form (poetry) and theme (love). Gault presents an interpretation of the Song's body imagery that sheds light on the perception of beauty in Israel and its relationship to surrounding cultures. Features Exploration of the Song's use of universal themes and culturally specific variations Discussion of the Song's literary structure and unity

Nineteen friends and colleagues present this Festschrift to Ellen van Wolde, honouring her life-long contribution to Biblical studies. The contributions focus on the major topics that define her research: the books of Genesis and Job, and the Hebrew language.

The annual Review of Biblical Literature presents a selection of reviews of the most recent books in biblical studies and related fields, including topical monographs, multi-author volumes, reference works, commentaries, and dictionaries. RBL reviews German, French, Italian, and English books and offers reviews in those languages.

The Song of Songs, also known as the Song of Solomon, is an unusual book to find in the Bible. As the Bible's only love poem, the Song offers a unique picture of relations between the sexes in biblical times. Unlike other biblical books, it consists entirely of dialogue. It looks at love from both a woman's and a man's point of view, and shows the reader what love is like exclusively through what lovers say about it. There are few issues in Song of Songs interpretation that are not open to debate, which makes it a fascinating book to study. In this Guide, Cheryl Exum provides a concise survey of the principal questions encountered in Song of Songs scholarship. She also takes the discussion beyond the traditional research questions to introduce readers to new and ongoing areas in Song of Songs research. Bibliographies and suggestions for further reading at the end of each chapter provide additional resources for readers interested in pursuing specific topics and exploring new directions in the study of the Song of Songs.

The illuminations of The Saint John’s Bible have delighted many with their imaginative takes on Scripture. But many struggle to appreciate the calligraphy more deeply than merely noting its beauty. Does calligraphy mean something? How is it beautiful? This book, written by a biblical scholar who has spent years working with this Bible, shows how calligraphic art powerfully interplays visual form, textual content, and creative process. Homrighausen proposes five lenses for this artform: gardens, weaving, pilgrimage, touching, and enfleshing words. Each of these lenses springs from the poetry of the Song of Songs, its illuminations in The Saint John’s Bible, and medieval ways of understanding the scribe’s craft. While these metaphors for calligraphic art draw from this particular illuminated Bible, this book is aimed at all lovers of calligraphy, art, and sacred text.

This survey textbook offers an accessible introduction to the Wisdom books and the Psalter in their literary, theological, and canonical contexts. Written by an expert in the Old Testament wisdom tradition and Psalms, this book pays particular attention to theological themes in Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs, and the Psalter. Christopher Ansberry skillfully connects these themes to comparable themes in the other books discussed in the volume and to the broader biblical canon. He also integrates philosophical concerns and questions. This addition to the Reading Christian Scripture series is an ideal faith-friendly introduction for students of the Old Testament, Wisdom literature, and Psalms. It features a beautiful full-color design with an abundance of sidebars, images, and other visual aids to enhance the reading experience and facilitate learning. Additional resources for instructors and students are available through Textbook eSources.

The present volume searches for different biblical perceptions of the wild, paying particular attention to the significance of fluid boundaries between the domestic and the wild, and to the options of crossing borders between them. Drawing on space, fauna, and flora, scholars investigate the ways biblical authors present the wild and the domestic and their interactions. In its six chapters and two responses, Hebrew Bible scholars, an archaeobotanist, an archaeologist, a geographer, and iconographers join forces to discuss the wild and its portrayals in biblical literature.The discussions bring to light the entire spectrum of real, imagined, metaphorized, and conceptualized forms of the wild that appear in biblical sources, as also in the material culture and agriculture of ancient Israel, and to some extent observe the great gap between biblical observations and modern studies of geography and of mapping that marks the distinctions between “the wilderness” and “the sown.” The book is the first written product presented on two consecutive years (2019, 2020) at the SBL Annual Meetings in the Section: “Nature Imagery and Conceptions of Nature in the Bible.”

The Song of Songs is the only book of the Bible to privilege the voice of a woman, and its poetry of love and eroticism also bears witness to violence. How do the contemporary #MeToo movement and other movements of protest and accountability renew questions about women, gender, sex, and the problematic of the public at the heart of this ancient poetry? This edited volume seeks to reinvigorate feminist scholarship on the Song by exploring diverse contexts of reading, from Akkadian love lyrics, to Hildegard of Bingen, to Marc Chagall.

We approach Raphael's "Agony in the Garden" or Fra Angelico's "Crucifixion" for their beauty and not primarily to learn about fifteenth-century fashion or even to decode the iconography. Yet the many books on the Song of Songs, whether they try to read the book as an ancient Near Eastern love song or a Christian allegory, miss the main point of this book: its aesthetic elements. "Aesthetics" is the appreciation of beauty. Aesthetics examines literary form as a response to content, the way poetics works with contents, the use of loaded semantic terms, even the sound created by words and what cognitive science tells us it does to listeners. This book uses the commentary format to accompany an individual's reading of the Song of Songs, focusing on these neglected aspects of the text. It both reads the book as it is meant to be read and opens up a new vista on this magnificent biblical text.

The first comprehensive study of the Song of Songs' use of military metaphors Although love transcends historical and cultural boundaries, its conceptualizations, linguistic expressions, and literary representations vary from culture to culture. In this study, Danilo Verde examines love through the military imagery found throughout the Song’s eight chapters. Verde approaches the military metaphors, similes, and scenes of the Song using cognitive metaphor theory to explore the overlooked representation of love as war. Additionally, this book investigates how the Song conceptualizes both the male and the female characters, showing that the concepts of masculinity and femininity are tightly interconnected in the poem. Conquered Conquerors provides fresh insights into the Song's figurative language and the conceptualization of gender in biblical literature.