Edmée Kingsmill offers a valuable resource for tracking the rich, intertextual web of the Song of Songs. The author is a nun of the Community of the Sisters of the Love of God in Oxford, and her work is informed by the contemplative tradition. The goal of this project is to present a direct challenge to the recent scholarly consensus that the Song of Songs is a collection of secular love poems. Kingsmill argues, instead, for a single author with an intention to produce liturgical poetry focused on the love of God.
The book is organised thematically. The first chapter, ‘The Eros Strand in Wisdom’, highlights the similarities between the Song and Ben Sira and Proverbs, and advocates reclaiming the book's place in the wisdom tradition. The ensuing chapters take up various aspects of imagery in the Song. Chapters are ‘Symbols of Israel’, ‘Mythical Elements’, ‘The Garden Temple’, ‘The Beloved’, and ‘The Eros of God’. The final section is an original translation and brief commentary on the text as a whole.
The volume offers a lively case for reading the Song of Songs with attention to its allusions and reception, an argument made elsewhere – but with less thoroughness – by scholars such as Yair Zakovitch and Andre′ LaCoque. Most compellingly, in this light the Song is seen as a subversive response to prophetic sexual rhetoric. Taking up the image of Israel as the lover of God, the Song offers a counter-tradition which is encouraging instead of convicting. Kingsmill herself is advocating not postmodern readings but traditional ones; nevertheless, the canon in this perspective is provocatively dialogical. Additionally, Kingsmill offers a serious effort to appreciate divine love as erotic love.
There are fruitful connections here with recent scholarly discussions of sacred marriage texts. Martti Nissinen summarises: ‘the Song of Songs can be understood against the background of the divine–human marriage matrix, different from the imagery in the prophetic books but closely related to the imagery employed in the Mesopotamian rituals and poetry of divine love’ (‘Song of Songs and Sacred Marriage’, in M. Nissinen and R. Uro (eds), Sacred Marriages (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2008), p. 215). Pirjo Lapinkivi (2004) has argued that these Sumerian texts are not simply secular lyrics, but also relate to esoteric ritual, royal ideology and to the mystical encounter of the soul with the divine. In ancient texts, love was a metaphor for beneficial relationships of all kinds, and the erotic provides language for the experience of the divine. But if mystical meanings are implied in the Song of Songs (as per Kingsmill and Lapinkivi), it is only by hints and gestures, not by an elaborate system of hidden meanings which can be expounded by recourse to significantly later texts.
Behind Kingsmill's analysis is one basic conviction: ‘It is worship that provides the hermeneutical key to the Song, though it could do nothing if the original text intended other than to arouse the love of God’ (p. 199). Kingsmill eschews the term ‘allegory’ early on, since in her view this refers to meaning imputed by the reader, while she wants to focus on what is actually intended by the author, which she links to the exploration of metaphors. This distinction – and the theoretical complexities of authorial intention – could be treated with greater precision. What is neglected in this search for the author's liturgical motives is the plain sense of the text. If an ancient text did wish to speak of actual human love, what other language would it use?
