>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington, D.C.
>> Ann Brener: Good
afternoon to everybody.
Can you hear me?
Okay. I'm standing in
for Dr. Mary-Jane Deeb,
the Chief of the Division
who has to be away.
She will be coming, but
she'll be slipping in late.
She's very much looking forward
to hearing Professor Rendsburg.
So, first, my name is Ann Brener.
I'm the Hebraic Specialist
here at the Library of Congress
in the African-Middle
Eastern Division.
So I'm basically doubling
both as an M.C. of the program
and standing in for Dr. Deeb.
So just a few words for those
of you who have never been
to the African-Middle
Eastern Division before.
The African-Middle Eastern Division
is comprised of three sections --
the Near East Section which covers
about 78 different countries
from the Caucasus down to the
[foreign word] to Morocco.
And there's the Hebraic Section,
and then there is also
the African Section,
which covers all except
Sahara in Africa.
The African-Middle Eastern
Division is recognized as one
of the world's foremost
research centers for all
of these countries and
all these languages.
And so we'd like to welcome you
to our beautiful Reading Room.
Now today's event has been
a long time in the making.
I think many of you will
feel as I do that the "Song
of Songs" is the most
beautiful poem ever written.
And for years now I've just
been waiting for the right time
to display the Library's wonderful
addition to this biblical scroll.
So when I heard that Professor
Tar Rendsburg was going to be here
in Washington, and that he was
willing to come speak at the Library
of Congress, I knew the
right time had come.
Professor Rendsburg
is quit simply one
of the most renowned
scholars of The Bible today.
He is the author of seven books on
biblical literature and language
and about 170 articles,
that's one-seven-zero.
Perhaps his best-known book is The
Bible and the Ancient Near East ,
co-authored with the late
renowned Cyrus Gordon.
He has also produced two DVDs for
the Great Choruses Program ,
one on the "Book of Genesis" and
one of the "Dead Sea Scrolls."
His forthcoming book is entitled
How the Bible is Written ,
and it will be published by
Azenbraun [assumed spelling]
in 2018, just around the corner.
Professor Rendsburg currently holds
the Blanche and Irving Laurie Chair
of Jewish History at
Rutgers University.
He has also served as
Visiting Professor at many
of the best universities in the
world, including Oxford, Cambridge,
and Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
But to me, personally, Professor
Rendsburg will always be
that wonderful professor
from Cornell,
the one with whom I had
the great good fortune
to study during my years
in graduate school.
I took every course I could
with Professor Rendsburg
and in just a few moments
you'll understand why.
It is a great honor, therefore,
to invite Professor Rendsburg
to the podium, and to welcome
him into the -- our Reading Room.
Professor Rendsburg.
[ Applause ]
>> Gary Rendsburg:
Thank you very much.
Such a lovely introduction and
professors are only as good --
I should say teachers are only
as good as their students.
And, of course, it's
with such fond memories
that I recall the classes we had at
Cornell before I moved on to Rutgers
with Ann Brenner amongst
the students.
And here we are, reunited
at the magnificent facility,
the Library of Congress, just
one of the nation's treasures.
In fact, of course, we should
say one of the world's treasures.
So, yes, let's talk about
the "Song of Songs."
So, basically, what is it?
What is the "Song of Songs?"
It is, simply stated, love poetry.
It is exquisite love poetry.
And, of course, as we just heard,
is everyone's favorite poem.
So the immediate question,
of course,
is why is it in the biblical canon?
How did it get there?
And the answer is, because texts
have an afterlife, which is to say,
although the author of the
"Song of Songs," according
to all biblical scholars,
intended it as simply love poetry,
what Robert Alter calls
and ode to intimacy.
And I'll come back to
that point in a moment.
It was later Jews and
later Christians
who reinterpreted the text
in that text afterlife,
if I can use that expression.
For Jews, the "Song of Songs" was
not the love between a young man
and a young woman, but rather
was the love between God
and the people of Israel.
God being masculine; the people
of Israel being feminine.
While Christians saw the
same love, in their case,
the love between Jesus
and the church.
Again, masculine and feminine,
as exemplified in the poem.
The most famous passage from
post-biblical literature
that we can cite in this regard is
the well-known maxim of Rabbi Akiva,
a second-century CE rabbi who played
on the Hebrew words Shir Hashirim
in Hebrew, "Song of Songs," as a
way of expressing the superlative
and is grammatically equivalent
to the expression Kodesh
Kodashim, Holy of Holies.
And, according to Rabbi Akiva,
the Book of Song of Songs ,
if all the scriptures are
holy, the Book of Song
of Songs is the Holy of Holies.
Here's an example from an
Christian art of the expression
that I have just indicated to you.
The opening words of the
Book of Song of Songs ,
after the superscription
which introduces the book,
is the female lover asking
her male lover to "kiss me."
And if you look at your translation,
you can see that in
chapter one, verse two.
This actually comes from The Lothian
Bible, one of the great treasures
of the Pierpont Morgan
Library in New York City.
And you can see the Latin
words there indicated.
The text, of course, is in the
Latin, the Vulgated Saint Jerome.
And you can see the Latin words, the
opening words of the "Song of Songs"
in Latin there, osculator
me, kiss me.
This text was written
in 1220 in England,
and it's beautifully illuminated.
And here's just one instance where
you can see the love of the male
and female, although, in this
case, it's obviously intended
by the illuminator to
be Jesus and the church.
I cannot show you Jewish art
showing you the same thing
because Jews would shy away
from indicating such things.
But, of course, there is
beautiful Jewish art of The Bible,
and so I'll leave this
image up for a bit here.
This is the beginning of
the the "Song of Songs"
in the Kennicott Bible,
written in Spain in 1476,
one of the great testimonies to
that remarkable Jewish community
of medieval Spain on the eve
of their expulsion just
16 years later in 1492.
This Bible has been at
the Bodleian Library
in Oxford since the 18th century.
Now let's talk a little
bit about the text.
And you have the translation.
It was actually produced by myself
and my co-author, and former student
as well, Scott Nagel of the
University of Washington.
And he and I wrote
a book on the "Song
of "Songs" called Solomon's
Vineyard .
In fact, I've given you the
translation that we produced along
with some -- two sets of notes.
One is a set of literary notes and
the other one is actually a set
of other notes that requires
further reading into the book,
which we're not going to do today.
But at least you have
the translation
and the literary notes
at the bottom there.
Now let's talk about
this issue of intimacy.
Normally in The Bible
we do not see intimacy.
We have an occasional scene.
In the Book of Genesis we
get a quick look at Isaac
and Rebekah playing
with one another,
the Hebrew text there [foreign
words], with one another.
But we see them from a distance.
We actually see them through
the eyes of Avi-Melech before --
the King of the Philistines,
so that we don't really get a
chance to see them up close.
Or we get to see Jacob and Rachel,
also in the Book of Genesis,
meeting at the well, and they kiss.
And we actually are taken into
their marriage bed, if I can say,
a few verses later in
Genesis Chapter 29.
But we don't get intimacy.
Each of these scenes is described
in very terse, prosaic manner --
they did this, they did that.
Even in the David and
Bathsheba story,
where one would think one
would maybe see some passion,
all we read there is that
she came into the palace,
they had intercourse,
and she left --
[ Speaking in Foreign Language ]
And he took her, and she came
to him and he lay with her
and she returned to her house.
Was there any wooing?
Was there any embrace?
Were there any words spoken?
Was there any passion?
Was there any emotion?
Was there any romance?
None of that is indicated
by the author of 2 Samuel.
The biblical authors, the prose
authors, just told the basic facts
in this very laconic
style of writing.
But "Song of Songs" is poetry.
Let's just look at one other
instance of the way the Book
of Song of Songs is
illuminated at the end
of chapter eight in
the Kennicott Bible.
And with love poetry, we have
something very, very different.
Love poetry gives us all of
the sensual aspects of what
that word love indicates for us.
In fact, if you'd look
at your translation,
just begin with chapter
one, verse two.
"May he kiss me with
the kisses of his mouth;
for your love is better than wine."
Now I'd like to point
out to you here
that this may sound a little
strange to us in our English sense.
But this is perfectly
acceptable in Hebrew poetry.
Do you notice how the A line --
biblical poetry is parallelistic?
Usually a set of couplets
where the A line
and the B line speak to one another.
The A lines states the point,
and the B line will enhance it
or emphasize it in some way.
Notice that in the A line, he is
addressed in the third person.
She says, "May he kiss me
with the kisses of his mouth."
There's a distance there.
But in the B line, she
shifts to second person.
She addresses him directly.
"For your love is better than wine."
And we'll find other examples of
this occurring in the poem as well.
And if you turn ahead, for
example, to other instances.
In chapter one, verse 12 and
13, she's still speaking.
Her voice is in the italics there.
"My nard gives forth its scent
sachet of myrrh as my beloved to me
between my breasts
may he lodge," right?
A woman's sachet, a little bag
that would contain the fragrance
which she would use to make her
body attractive is described here
as between her breasts.
But she envisions that
her male lover,
that this is where he will lodge,
He's like the little sachet
of fragrance that lies
between her breasts.
So when I talk about
intimacy and sensual poetry,
this is what you're seeing here
in the Book of Song of Songs .
Or turn ahead to chapter
two, verse six.
"His left hand is beneath
my head," she says,
"and his right hand embraces me."
Didn't such things occur in
all of those prosaic stories
that are referred to
earlier in biblical scenes?
And the answer is,
almost undoubtedly yes.
But, again, it's the prose
writers who deny us those images.
But it's the writers of
the poetry that allows us
to see and to hear these texts.
Now, if you look at
chapter one, verse two --
here we are again on the image.
We join the dialog, as
it were, in medias res,
and actually we'll end
in such fashion as well.
It's just two lovers on a
stage talking to one another.
Now we don't get a backstory.
She just begins with the opening
line that you see there, right?
She just invites the kisses
between the two lovers.
Now the two lovers speak
to each other throughout the
eight chapters of the poem.
But they are never truly together.
If I were staging this, and
I'll talk about performance
in a just moment, if
I were staging this,
I actually would envision the
female lover standing on one side
and the male lover standing on
another side, and they would speak
to one another occasionally.
They would speak to the audience, as
it were, perhaps a group this size,
as they recited the poetry.
Maybe occasionally
turning to another.
But the poem unfolds
without us actually getting
to see the two lovers,
the male lover
and the female lover,
ever really together.
And that's true of the opening
line and it's certainly true
of the last line of the poem which
we'll look at in just a moment.
This shift, by the way, as we just
saw here in chapter one, verse two,
from second person to third
person, also occurs elsewhere.
Take a look, for example, at
chapter two, verse 16 and verse 17,
where she says in verse 16, "My
beloved is mine and I am his,
grazing among the lilies."
Famous passage from "Song of Songs."
Again she's referring to
him in the third person.
But in verse 17 she actually
turns to him in the second person.
"Turn, liken yourself my beloved" --
the word turn there is
in the imperative form.
"Turn, liken yourself my
beloved to a gazelle."
So you begin to see the way the poem
operates between the third person --
the shifting between third
person and second person.
We do get lines of
poetry, of course,
that occur in his voice as well.
And turn ahead to chapter four,
verse five, just to show you.
And in chapter four, verse 11.
Just to show you that he, too,
can speak in sensual terms.
Chapter four, verse five.
"Your two breasts are
like two fawns,
twins of a doe grazing
among the lilies."
Or chapter four, verse 11,
would be another good example.
"Your lips drip honey, my bride,
honey and milk, under your tongue.
And the scent of your clothes
is like the scent of Lebanon."
Most likely referring to the cedar
tree which is the national symbol
of modern day Lebanon to the present
day, just like we use cedar wood
in cedar closets to have
our clothes smell nicely.
This is a good example, by the
way, chapter four, verse five,
at the tope of the page there,
to give you an indication
of how later Jewish interpretation
would understand the "Song
of Songs" is not referring to
the love between a male lover
and a female lover, but
rather the love between God
and the people of Israel.
The whole poem is given an entire
metaphorical meaning in the hands
of the later rabbinic interpreters.
"Your two breasts are like two
fawns," in chapter four, verse five.
If you read the later Jewish texts
that deal with "Song of Songs"
in this interpretive mode, this
refers to Moses and Aaron, right?
That will give you an example.
The two leaders of the people
of Israel in the Torah.
So this will give you a sense of
how the book gets reinterpreted.
There are times when the two
lovers are indeed together,
and I'm going to show you an example
of that in chapter four, verse 12.
He is speaking.
"A locked garden is
my sister, my bride,
a locked fountain, a sealed spring."
And then he begins to describe her
there in chapter four, verse 13.
"Pomegranates, choice fruits.
Wonderful Hebrew word,
[foreign word], henna with nard.
And if you go chapter four, verse
14, all of these various spices
that are referred to there --
frankincense, myrrh, et cetera.
And then in chapter four, verse 16,
where the shift goes from his voice
to her voice, back to the italics
in the second half of that verse.
She says, "May its," meaning the
garden, "may its spices stream.
May my beloved come to his garden."
Who is the garden?
It is she.
So you begin to see the
intimacy with which the voices
of the two young lovers
speak to one another.
"May my beloved come to his
garden," which, of course,
would be her because he has just
described her as such, as a garden.
"And may he eat of the
fruit of its choice fruits."
Chapter five, verse two, one of the
most central passages to my mind
of the entire eight chapters of
the Book of Song of Songs .
Notice how it begins.
She's speaking here.
Chapter five, verse two.
"I am asleep, but my
heart is awake."
Let's give you another
image to look at by the way.
Here are the two other pages of
the "Song of Songs," as written
out in the Kennicott Bible.
"I am asleep, but my
heart is awake."
Chapter five, verse two.
Now we all know what this means,
or we should know what this means.
She's dreaming.
But notice the language of poetry.
A prose write would
simply say, she dreamed.
That's the way prose writers speak.
But in poetry, you don't want to use
such a prosaic and
banal word as dream.
You say things like, I am
asleep, but my heart is awake,
and you get the sense
that everything that is
to follow here is a dream.
"Hark, my beloved knocks.
Open for me my sister, my darling."
She is quoting him now, hence
I put it in quotation marks.
"My dove, my perfect one."
She's imagining this in her dream
sequence that he is coming to her.
Verse three.
"I have removed my tunic.
My beloved sent forth his
hand through the hole."
You have the idea that he's
playing with the lock on the door
as she says actually in
chapter five, verse five, right?
As she, perhaps, is also playing
with the lock on the inside.
"And my fingers," at the end
of that verse, "flowing myrrh
on the handles of the lock."
So you can begin to see the
arousal here and the expectation
of the two coming together.
Of course, just as that happens,
in chapter five, verse six,
apparently she awakes from
her dream and now she has
to go seeking her beloved who
really isn't there because,
as we've just learned, this is all
a dream, and this is all love poetry
in which the two lovers
never come together.
May I point out to you at this
point, as you scan the pages
in front of you, that there's
much more in the italics
than there is in the other font.
And that's because the female
voice dominates in this poem.
We always think of the biblical
material as patriarchal literature.
And, of course, to a
great extent it is.
We get the great kings, David
and Solomon, and almost all
of our prophets are males, and
heroes like Moses and Aaron,
who are mentioned, are males.
But, of course, when we
come to other aspects
of biblical literature,
including the "Song of Songs,"
it doesn't have to be that way.
There are 65 lines in the poem
spoken by the female voice,
and 36 verses spoken
by the male voice.
She has almost twice as many
lines to recite than he does.
And in a performance you would
actually, of course, begin to see,
or the presentation of this text,
the oral presentation of this text,
you would, of course, see
how much more is given
to her voice than is to his.
There are also 15 verses
given to a third party,
which we call the chorus,
a set of --
almost if you can picture
Greek drama here for a moment,
perhaps something like
that would help.
His language, by the
way, is more repetitive.
And her language is more varied
and also much more expressive,
if I can use that subjective
judgment.
Let me give you examples,
moreover, where the female view,
the female point of
view, actually is
to be seen in this remarkable poem.
Turn to chapter two, verse nine.
Turn back to chapter
two, verse nine.
Actually at the top of the part
that's at the top of page 193.
She says, "Behold, he stands behind
our wall gazing through the windows,
peering through the lattices."
Now, if you look at
the footnote L here,
as you read biblical material
we have a series of scenes
which we call the "woman
at the window."
Rahab is inside her house, and
the two spies have been lowered
down a rope through her
window and on the ground.
And they have a conversation.
But you see that and hear
that through the eyes
of the two spies who
are on the ground.
Jezebel is in her palace, but
King Jehu is on the ground.
And you see the scene through
the eyes of Jehu on the ground.
And you see this in other places.
Michal, the daughter of
Saul, the wife of King David,
the mother of Sisrah
[assumed spelling].
These are always women
in the window.
But we view them from the viewpoint
of a man on the ground looking
up at the window where the
woman is in the window,
and we actually have artistic
representations of this
from ancient Near Eastern art,
including Phoenician ivory,
ivories carved by ancient
Phoenicians.
What do we have here?
We have the entire scene inverted.
Do you realize that she is inside
the house looking out at him
who is peering in through
the windows?
So this is an inversion of a
trope in biblical literature.
In fact, in ancient Near
Eastern art, if I can expand it
to that based on what
I've just referred to,
we actually are now
inside the house looking
out through her eyes,
where he is looking in.
So, hopefully, I've made
that point clear to you.
And, therefore, it is this female
voice which continues to dominate.
Now turn to chapter seven, verse 11,
where we see one other
examples of this.
If you look at chapter seven, verse
11, she says, it's in her voice,
"I am my beloved's, and
toward me is his urge."
Now, the word urge there is teshuqa.
Teshuqa is used, meaning desire,
and perhaps sexual desire,
it is used in Genesis Chapter
Three in the Adam and Eve story.
But is actually the -- the teshuqa
is actually going to belong to --
it is an inversion of the
typical male/female relationship
because it is not the male having
urge for the female, right?
In this passage it is the male
having urge or desire for her.
So it is an inversion of what we
would call biblical themes or tropes
or motifs which would have
been well-known, I would argue,
to an ancient Israelite audience
who was consuming this poem
as a consumer of literature.
And those are two excellent examples
of the inversion of the woman
in the window and the inversion here
of where the word desire
is intended.
And so the male and female
speak to one another, as I said.
But they are never really together.
Now let's talk about this
as an oral performance.
Picture the staging.
I think these texts were
in writing and perhaps each
of our lovers held the
text in their hands,
and there would have been
an audience, a gathering,
perhaps shepherds at the end of the
day around the campfire listening
to the literature of
Ancient Israel or, perhaps,
in a more urban environment,
at the town square, the piazza.
The only real open space in a very
urban center would be inside the
city gate.
And these would have
been spoken aloud.
People did not have a
written text in front of them.
This is true not only for
the poetry of The Bible,
this is true for all
ancient literature.
The idea of silent reading
is something which is very,
very late and, in fact, even in the
fourth century, Augustin marveled
at St. Ambrose, the Bishop of
Milan, who was able to read silently
because no other human
being was able to do
that in the fourth century.
Literature was produced orally.
It was all heard.
It was an oral/oral effect, oral
from the mouth, oral into the ear.
The poet wants to show you his
or her, but most likely a his,
although some have
suggested that the poem "Song
of Songs" was written
by a female, virtuosity.
And, accordingly, whenever lines
of poetry repeat in the poem,
they never, I repeat, never,
and there are dozens of examples
of repeated lines, they
never repeat verbatim.
And so you get lines such as
song chapter two, verse five,
and song chapter five, verse eight,
where you get the same expression,
"For I am sick with love."
In the second one it's a question,
"That I am sick with love."
But the poet will not
repeat the words --
[ Speaking in Foreign Language ]
Or in chapter two, verse six,
one of the lines we looked
at to describe the
intimacy between the two.
In chapter two, verse six --
[ Speaking in Foreign Language ]
"His left hand is beneath my head
and his right hand embraces me."
When she repeats those lines
towards the end of the poem
in chapter eight, she changes the
-- she deletes a very small element
of the Hebrew grammar
there, the preposition le.
So the proposition
tachathle [assumed spelling]
which I have rendered beneath,
becomes just simply tachath
which is the word under.
Fortunately, English
has two prepositions,
synonymous prepositions, and
I was able to play with them
in the translation using beneath
for one and under for the other.
It so happens, by the way,
that in biblical Hebrew,
tachath is the normal
way of saying something,
and tachathle is actually abnormal.
And so we call this
defamiliarization.
Where the poet used this less-common
form, tachathle, and then --
which may have rung a chord with
people listening to this text,
but in chapter eight
corrected it as it were --
corrected it in quotation
marks here, right?
Corrected it to the form tachath.
Another example.
In chapter two, verse 16,
these are the famous lines
that I quoted before, she says
[speaking in foreign language].
"My beloved is mine, and I am his."
And then in chapter six, verse three
[speaking in foreign language].
"I am my beloved's and
my beloved is mine."
This time using the word [foreign
words], my beloved, twice.
The same expression, of course,
is used, but changing from pronoun
to noun in the second iteration
of this -- of these lines.
Sometimes you get the same three
lines which are used in the poem.
And here's an example of it, which
also brings us to chapter eight,
verse 14, the last line
in the entire poem.
In 2:9 she says, "My beloved is like
a gazelle, or a fawn of the hinds."
I'm translating a little
hyperliterally here.
And in chapter two, verse
17, I read this before --
"Turn, liken yourself,
my beloved, to a gazelle,
or to a fawn of the hinds, upon
the mountains of cleavage."
Now, that last phrase there [foreign
words], this has engendered a lot
of discussion because we
really don't know what
that second means there --
on the mountains of what?
But the Hebrew root,
[foreign word], better,
or in the pausal form here
[foreign words] means to cleave.
It's actually used in
Genesis chapter 15.
For example, when Abraham
cuts up animals.
So we think that this
is probably something
like "mountains of cleavage."
So you get the idea that he is a --
like a member of the deer family.
You know how beautiful deers are
and the imagery of the deer hopping
and jumping over the mountains.
And in chapter eight, verse 14,
the very last line of the poem,
when the poem brings everything to a
conclusion or to a quasi-conclusion,
because I said we joined the poem
in medias res and we sort of ended
that way, she says
to him once again,
again changing the language
[speaking in foreign language].
Right? "Flee my beloved and liken
yourself to a gazelle [speaking
in foreign language], or to
a fawn of the hinds [speaking
in foreign language], upon
the mountains of spices.
And where are the mountains
of spices?
Presumably she's referring once
more, as we heard much earlier
in the poem, to her breasts.
And so the mountains of cleavage
earlier become the mountains
of spices here.
But you're supposed to
remember all this in your mind.
And in an audience, in consumers
of literature who were attuned
to listening to a text and
not reading it silently,
I would argue that all
of this would have --
they would have reckoned
with all of this.
And one more example of
that, in his mouth now.
Very minor changes, but
nevertheless, when he describes her
in chapter four, "Your hair
is like a block of goats
that flow down from Mount Gilead."
And in chapter six, verse five,
he changes the last couple
of words there simply to "that flow
down from the Gil'ad"
or "from the Gilead."
So you get the sense that you
can make these minor changes
and you get no repetitions
whatsoever.
The variation, the
ability to vary the text
and to vary the language
is absolutely breathtaking.
Similarly, here, in
chapter four, verse two,
he says about her teeth
[speaking in foreign language].
"Your teeth are like a
flock of shorn-ones."
There is nothing more white than
sheep coming up from the washing.
And so he compares
her teeth to that.
But he doesn't use the word sheep.
He used the word [foreign words],
the ones who have been shorn,
which would be, again,
this defamiliarization.
But when he repeats the lines
in chapter six, verse six,
now he uses the word for ewes
[foreign words], and, of course,
we got a hint of that in
chapter four, verse two.
It's not stated more
explicitly in 6:6.
And, again, the poet
has varied the language.
The other thing to note when
you listen to a text orally is
that you should always pick
up on the alliteration.
Oral presentation of text is
alliterative in the ancient world,
and I would argue, actually,
in any oration you should always
attempt some alliteration.
And here we are in Washington, D.C.,
and let us recall the opening lines
of the "Gettysburg Address"
by President Lincoln.
"Four score and seven years
ago our fathers brought forth
on this continent."
Why did he say four score
and seven years ago?
Why not just 87 years ago?
Right? Why do we all have to
do that mental math and figure
out what President
Lincoln was saying?
Because four score and seven years
ago our fathers brought forth --
you get to hear the alliteration
between the four and the fathers
and the fourth -- brought forth on
this continent a nation conceived --
listen to that, continent
and conceived, right?
So the opening syllable.
This is oration and there's
nothing better than the oration
of the "Gettysburg Address."
Fortunately I teach in the U.S.
and I can teach this to my students
because if I were teaching
in another country I don't
think they would know President
Lincoln's words.
But you get the point.
Now let's come back to the
poet of "Song of Songs."
And he alliterates
whenever he's able to do so.
Alliteration is through the poem
[speaking in foreign language]."
Okay, do you hear I've given
you the transliterations there?
Do you hear the same
sounds which are being used?
In song one, verse 17,
she refers to her house --
[ Speaking in Foreign Language ]
I would point out a few things here.
This is the only time in
The Bible where the word
for cypresses is not [foreign
word], but rather [foreign word]
in atypical form because the
t-sound there is going to alliterate
with the other t's that carry
through this line of poetry.
And [foreign word] means
runners, like the beams of a house
where they would put
the cypress trees
up as the runners of the house.
That is a very unusual word
in The Bible [foreign word],
appearing only one or
two places in The Bible.
So you use unusual
words and unusual forms.
What we would -- what we actually
say in -- sorry for the Latin,
[foreign words], for the
sake of alliteration.
And other examples of this
as you work through the poem.
I won't do 3:6.
That's a long one.
But let's look at 4:2, referring
to the animals, to the animals
which are always twinned
to each other --
[speaking in foreign language].
Sorry, this is referring
to her teeth, again.
She has had no missing teeth, right?
Her smile is perfect.
[ Speaking in Foreign Language ]
Right? All of whom.
All of her teeth are twinned.
None of them is bereaved, like this
tooth is missing its matching tooth
below, or something like that.
In chapter five is the most --
is the greatest concentration
of the alliteration in the poem,
and it's actually that dream
scene that I referred to.
In her dream scene, she is
able to alliterate her poetry.
And I don't think it's a
coincidence that the poet has placed
into her mouth in that extremely
important scene at the beginning
of chapter five all
of these words here.
On the right-hand column
Hebrew words are based
on three-letter roots.
Certainly the verbs and
sometimes the nouns, as well.
And I have given you the
three-letter roots that you see here
in these words in the
right-hand column.
Now I've highlighted for you the
word in chapter five, verse three,
'atannepem, shall I soil them?
This is the only place in The
Bible where this verb occurs.
The root [foreign words] occurs
only here and the word means
to soil, to make something dirty.
In chapter -- two verses later,
she uses the word natpu, dripped,
taking the same three root
letters with a more common root
and creating an anagram of them.
But you can see once more
the employment of rare words
for the sake of alliteration.
Let's end with one instance,
or one final instance
of the poet's literary brilliance.
And there's nothing more
brilliant than what you see
in front of you right here.
In chapter two, verse 12,
there is, in this case,
not a couplet of two lines, but
rather a triplet of three lines.
So if you're going to
have parallelistic poetry,
which I referred to at the
beginning, you have the a line
and the b line expressing
basically the same thing.
But what if you have an a
line, a b line, and a c line?
One of them is going to be something
like an orphan line because a
and b could be parallel,
leaving c by itself,
or b and c could be
parallel, leaving a by itself.
It's true that all three
could say the same thing,
but that's not what you have here.
But, of course, the poet is
a literary genius and is able
to solve the problem
through this triplet.
[ Speaking in Foreign Language ]
In the a line -- the whole poem,
by the way there in chapter two
versus 11 and 12 -- refers to
the end of the winter rains.
The winter rains have gone.
That's in the past.
That's in chapter two, verse 11.
And so this is a description
of spring.
Once more, of course,
you're never going
to use the word "spring," right?
Too prosaic.
You're going to paint a picture.
You're going to be a romantic
poet from 19th-century England.
Wordsworth would never, you know,
would never use prosaic words.
He would have to portray the
picture that he was trying to do.
Similarly you have
that here in 2:12.
So, in the a line,
you have the reference
to the blossoms appearing
in the land, right?
This is something out of botany.
And in the c line,
you have the voice
of the turtledove has
returned, right,
because the migration of birds.
The birds are coming back in
the springtime and this comes
out of the field of ornithology.
So what are you going
to do with your b line?
So in your b line you
put the word zamir,
and zamir in Hebrew means
both pruning and also song.
So with its meaning pruning, the
word looks back to the a line
where you had the blossoms, and with
the meaning song it looks forward
to the meaning of -- to the
voice of the turtledove.
And everything has to
have a term, right?
We call this Janus Parallelism,
based on the two-faced Greek God,
Janus, who faced both left
and right, for which our month
of January is name, by the
way, because it's looking back
at the old year and
forward to the new year.
This is what poets
are capable of doing,
and there is no greater poet than,
as we heard in Dr.
Brener's introduction,
than the poet who left
us the beautiful poem,
the most beautiful poem
of the "Song of Songs."
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
Questions?
>> Ann Brener: Thank
you so, so much.
Yes, the poet who created this
beautiful poem was the greatest poet
of all.
But it also takes a great
teacher and a great scholar
to make it come alive for us.
And I think that's what
Professor Rendsburg --
>> Gary Rendsburg: Thank you.
>> Ann Brener: -- has
done once again for me
and I'm sure for all of you again.
Aren't you jealous?
I had a whole semester with
him on this [laughter].
Okay. I'm sure some of you have
questions for Professor Rendsburg,
so please feel free to ask.
Let me just mention that your
questions will be videotaped
and will be available
on our website.
So speak politely [inaudible].
>> Gary Rendsburg: Yes, sir.
>> You said that the poet
might be a xenophobe.
Do you [inaudible] who it might
be or is there an [inaudible]?
>> Gary Rendsburg: Could you
repeat the question, please?
And then I'll repeat
it for everyone here.
>> You said that the poet might
be [inaudible] based on the fact
that are quite [inaudible] lines
in [inaudible] voice [inaudible].
Is there any way of knowing
who it might have been?
>> Gary Rendsburg: So --
okay, the question is,
since the female voice dominates,
and feminine themes dominate
in the poem, can we judge
who this poet might have been
if it was indeed a woman?
Of course, the same question could
be asked if the poet was a man.
And the answer is we cannot.
These poems -- all of this
literature is simply anonymous.
And this is not just true of
ancient Hebrew literature.
It's also true of all the other
literatures of the Ancient World.
So let me distinguish for you
between Near Eastern Literation,
and by that I mean Ancient
Egyptian, Ancient Babylonian,
Ancient Hebrew, whatever
we may have.
The texts are almost
always anonymous.
We simply do not know
who the authors are.
And contrast that with Ancient
Greece where we know the names
of all the authors, and then
also in the wake of Greece, Rome,
because in the Greek
and Roman models,
texts belonged to their authors.
So we know who the playwrights
were -- Aeschylus and Sophocles.
And we know who the historians
were -- Thucydides and Herodotus.
And we know who the philosophers
were -- Plato and Aristotle.
And the physicians who left us
text -- Hippocrates and Galen.
And on and on it goes.
This is not true in
the Near Eastern mode.
The texts were communal property.
If you're aware of
this, Izaiah Chapter Two
and Makkah Chapter Four are
almost verbatim the same language.
Now my students worry because,
of course, we have an honor code
at Rutgers and all universities.
Which one plagiarized
from the other?
And I tell them it's not a
question of plagiarism whatsoever.
It's almost an honor
to quote the other one.
And, of course, both
poets may have --
both prophets may have been
quoting yet a third party, you know,
author x, whom we don't know.
So texts were communal property.
What we do know occasionally are the
names of the scribes who actually,
in ancient colophons, would
even give us their names.
Nothing like the more
well-developed medieval colophons
where we learned lots of
information beyond their names.
But basically all we then get
is just the name of the scribe
who then says, I copied it word
for word, letter for letter,
symbol for symbol, from the
text that was before me.
So, unfortunately, we can say
nothing beyond that, yeah.
I should say something
about female authorship.
Our assumption is that almost
all texts are written by men.
That's just the working hypothesis
in the Ancient Near East.
Having said that, and now I'm going
to speak out of the other side
of my mouth, the earliest
writer whom we know by name
in the world was a Sumerian
priestess named Enheduanna.
And she left us some hymns
to the Goddess Ishtar,
and we know her name.
And it's very possible that we know
her name because she was a woman
and felt it was necessary
to give us her name.
It was around 2000 BCE.
A little bit actually
-- or 2200 BCE.
So that would be an exception.
But it also gives us the idea
that, yes, women did author texts.
And as far as the authorship
of the "Song of Songs,"
and I am totally agnostic on this,
the female authorship has
been proposed by scholars
and most notably by the great
scholar Shelomo Dov Goitein
who is associated with his
great work on the Cairo Geniza,
but also made major contributions
to the study of The Bible as well.
Who else? Yes, sir.
>> If I understand you correctly,
you're saying that a text written
by a woman would be very rare.
But this brings to mind the The
Book of J by Professor Harold Bloom
who sets out the hypothesis
that the J text
and the core is written
by a Negro princess.
>> Gary Rendsburg: Right.
>> Would you comment on it?
>> Gary Rendsburg: I have the
greatest respect for Harold Bloom
who is just one of the world's
greatest Shakespeare scholars
and elucidators of Renaissance
English Literature and much else
in English and world literature.
But he simply doesn't know the
biblical material well enough,
I'm sorry, to say.
Anything is possible.
First of all, I even reject
the notion of a J source,
I have to tell you that, because
I approach the biblical material
differently from the
usual source critics.
But he is -- this was a
very well-known book of his,
where it made a big popular
splash when he wrote it.
And I don't want to say anything
harsh about Professor Bloom
because I've learned so
much from his writings.
I was an English major as an
undergraduate and, of course,
Bloom was something we all read.
And I continue to read
and learn from his work.
But his work on biblical
studies should just be set aside
for the moment, with all due
respect to his remarkable intellect
and great contributions to the
field of comparative literature.
Yes. Yes.
[ Inaudible Speaker ]
>> Gary Rendsburg: Okay.
So the question was, at what point
did Jewish authors actually begin
to ascribe their names
to their compositions?
The second half of your question
I'll deal with in just a second.
And the answer to that is, under
the -- in the Age of Hellenism.
When Alexander the Great
conquered the Near East in 330 BCE,
Hellenism spread throughout.
Egypt became Hellenized.
The Land of Israel
became Hellenized.
What we now call modern-day
Syria became Hellenized.
And, actually, far to the
east, as far east as Iran
and modern-day Afghanistan we
have Greek inscriptions all
because of the great
empire that Alexander built.
And Hellenistic influence
certainly took hold on those regions
which were closest to Greece --
Egypt, the Land of
Israel, Syria, and so on.
The earliest Jewish writer who left
his name to a book is The Book
of Ben Sira written in 180 BCE,
where we actually know
the name of the author.
Embedded into the Hebrew text
is the name of the author.
And that Hebrew text, as you
may know, was lost at some point
in the Middle Ages and was recovered
in the Cairo Ganesa in the end
of the 19th century -- Solomon
Schechter being the first one
to identify a Hebrew original of the
Greek translation of Ben Sira .
But we have the [inaudible]
in Greek translation
and we have two-thirds
of it now in Hebrew.
It's Heboriginal [assumed spelling].
So he would be the
first author to do so.
And then in his wake you also --
writing in Hebrew I should say.
He's the first author
writing in Hebrew to do this,
Jewish author writing in Hebrew.
There were Jewish authors
in Egypt who actually wrote
in Greek even earlier than Ben Sira.
We have only snippets
of their material.
And a century after that
we have the famous case
of Philo, a prolific writer.
So, yes, all of these Greek Jewish
writers left us their names,
and Josephus in that
mode is writing in Greek.
So he, of course, would give
us his name, as he does.
Now, the second part of the
question deals with a comment
in the Talmud in
the "Tractate of" --
in the Babylonian Talmud in the
"Tractate of Bava Batra" from,
let's say maybe 4- or 500 CE,
although that passage is
evoking an earlier layer
of rabbinic literature, so
it may go back what's known
as a Brita in Hebrew, or Aramaic.
It may go back to 200 CE.
And there the rabbi's
attempt to give us the names
of who wrote the biblical
books, right?
So that's what -- they
do that at that point.
They actually don't mention
the "Torah" in that passage,
because I guess the
"Torah's" just assumed
to have Mosaic authorship
or divine word.
But it starts with Joshua and it
works through, and it attempts
to give us the who wrote
book this and book that.
So that is probably, again, part
of the Hellenistic influence
on the rabbis who now
decided that they needed
to ascribe the biblical
books to particular authors.
And if I didn't mention --
I did not mention the "Song
of Songs" gets attributed
to Solomon,
which is why it's also known
as the "Song of Solomon" in --
more likely in Christian context.
Yes.
[ Inaudible Speaker ]
Okay. Who claims this did you say?
Ethiopes and Christians.
I though so.
Right. So the Ethiopes
and Christians --
I don't know, venerate may
be too great a term for it,
but venerate the story of Solomon
and the visit of the Queen of Sheba,
Sheba being in far Southern Arabia,
just across the Red
Sea from Ethiopia.
And so this would be part of the
Jewish and Christian traditions
of Solomon writing the Book
of Song of Songs" in his youth.
And I don't think there
were Jewish passages
which ascribe it specifically to
the visit of the Queen of Sheba,
but there are rabbinic texts
which ascribe Solomon's authorship
during the time of his youth,
in contrast to his
authorship of the Book
of Proverbs which he
did in full maturity.
And then the Book of Ecclesiastes"
or Kohelet which he did in old age.
So that's as much as
I can say about it.
So it's a beautiful
tradition, of course,
amongst the Ethiopian Christians.
So thanks for reminding us of that.
And, of course, for the great
place that Solomon holds
in the Ethiopian tradition.
Yeah.
>> Ann Brener: Okay.
Okay. Well, I would like to
invite all of you to come back
and see the display of rare
books in our Conference Room.
And I'd like to thank
Professor Rendsburg once again
for an absolutely wonderful talk.
>> Gary Rendsburg: Thank you.
I thank you all.
[ Applause ]
>> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc.gov.