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YouTube Channel: Project Unity
Video: The Vatican Fired Him for Revealing What the Bible Really Says!

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I know this book is not in the bibliography of my book, Historical Accuracy.

I loved her commentary on Lamentations, the Kindle of which is priced at $5.99. The Song of Songs at $83.99!

I imagine I'll be able to get it through an interlibrary loan.

I support the author, when I'm allowed to.  If there is a book I wish to read and my attempts to acquire it by proper methods are frustrated then I am perforce* left to resort to... other methods.  

*Hey, I got to use 'perforce' in a sentence!  How often does that happen?  

Perhaps, I might start reading ** you do not have permission to see this link ** and afterwards summarizing them. 

I'm reading ** you do not have permission to see this link **, by Susan Haskins a scholar and art historian.  The book traces views of Mary Magdalen in literature and art from the NT to the present day.  Hippolytus of Rome (c. 165 – c. 235 AD) wrote the earliest surviving Christian commentary on the Song of Songs.  It was written in the early third century and survives only in scattered fragments.  

Hippolytus identified the forlorn lover of Song 3 with Mary Magdalen and her longing for the missing Jesus after the Resurrection.

Upon my bed at night

I sought him whom my soul loves;

I sought him, but found him not;

I called him, but he gave no answer.

I will rise now and go about the city,

in the streets and in the squares;

I will seek him whom my soul loves.’

I sought him, but found him not.

The sentinels found me,

as they went about in the city.

‘Have you seen him whom my soul loves?’

Scarcely had I passed them,

when I found him whom my soul loves.

I held him, and would not let him go...

Haskins speculates that Hippolytus' commentary on this passage is the ultimate source of the idea of a, ahem, "special" relationship between Mary and Jesus that so seized the imagination of later commentators and interpreters like the gnostics.  Both Jews and Christians early on took a mystical interpretation of the Song, and Haskins cautions against assigning motives to Hippolytus we can't ever know, but you would have to be almost deliberately purblind to ignore the eroticism of this text.  

Perhaps we can take counsel here from our Hindu friends who when asked will tell you that the greatest image of spiritual love is sexual ecstasy!  How so?   Because that is the moment when you are most taken out of your "self" and merged into the Self.    The Children of Abraham (Jews, Christians, Muslims) have always had a hard time with this idea.  Like Augustine, sex is fine with them as long as you don't enjoy it. 

Sometimes it amuses me to imagine growing up in a tradition with no Fall and capable of depictions like ** you do not have permission to see this link **.  Not on bordellos but on Temples!  

Good poetry reminds me of what life should be: an experience –  the only way to live is to be engaged in living.

Is that your translation? 

No not really.  I checked my reading against a couple online versions, selecting the phrases I preferred. But the power of Neruda's language is his concreteness.

There are just not many ways you can translate   

Quiero hacer contigo
lo que la primavera hace con los cerezos.

I want
to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.

but wow!  

(Just by way of experimentation I ran that last line through an AI translator and it came up with the identical reading.  Even the robots cannot improve on perfection!)  

"I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells,
dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses."

"Every day you play with the light of the universe." 

That last one I could dwell on all the day long.

Good poetry reminds me of what life should be: an experience -  the only way to live is to be engaged in living.

Is that your translation? 

BJH1960 said
In spring when I hear the cooing sound of the δεκαοχτούρα (the Eurasian collared dove) I am often reminded of some of the loveliest verses in scripture: Song 2:10-13.
  

Yeah!  And that reminds me of one of Pablo Neruda's most beautiful poems.  I quote only the last verse for length. 

Mis palabras llovieron sobre ti acariciándote.
Amé desde hace tiempo tu cuerpo de nácar soleado.
Hasta te creo dueña del universo.
Te traeré de las montañas flores alegres, copihues,
avellanas oscuras, y cestas silvestres de besos.
Quiero hacer contigo
lo que la primavera hace con los cerezos.

being translated thusly-

My words rained over you, stroking you.
A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body.
I go so far as to think that you own the universe.
I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells,
dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses.
I want
to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.

-Poema 14: Juegas todos los días con la luz del universo

Poem 14: Every day you play with the light of the universe.

from Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

Robert said

BruceRMcF said
Especially if one of the "tribes" of Israel have many names of early patriarchs of the tribe which some consider to reflect Egyptian more than Semitic names, as with the Tribe of Levi.

I've always been sympathetic to this view of Richard Elliott Friedman. Why make up a story that Moses was really a Hebrew baby found by Pharoah's daughter and raised as an Egyptian if there was no need to argue for the true Hebrew nature of the Levites?
  

Quite. Something like, "An Egyptian and his brother tries to strike a deal with a group of Semitic former refugees from the general Palestine area in a fight for political power, loses the fight, and are forced into exile from the core of Egypt into their Palestinian territories along with the cabal who had supported him. The cabal worshipped a southern Storm god YHWH rather than Baal, and spread the worship of YHWH as the primary national God ('you shall have no other Gods before me'), among the confederation of Hebrew tribes in the Palestinian hill country. It became well enough established that it spread into the neighboring small kingdom to the south of the confederation." makes for a much less dramatic story than the one that they eventually settled on.

Fascinating stuff.  I'll likely read more on it.

I’m not sure I’m how much this last quotation relates to my question above, and perhaps my question relates more to how I personally approach and attempt to integrate formalism, structuralism, deconstruction, and other forms of new criticisms to historico-critical methodologies.

I think basically, I was trying to clear out the impression that Geller was simply focused on the literary value without consideration to other, ‛socio-historical’ aspects. The quote was an attempt to illustrate that this was not the case.

What does Geller owe to the new criticisms outlined above? Is it merely the focus on the final text as a literary expression, which he then further appreciates as an author’s perspective engaged with an historical audience? Or does he more specifically embrace and utilize elements of formalism, structuralism, deconstruction, etc?

These questions are a bit more difficult. In order for me to respond in any coherent fashion, I will need to further study in depth of detail his observations and how they relate to those disciplines, i.e., formalism, structuralism, deconstruction, etc. There I am also handicapped as I have little exposure to those disciplines, so I’ll also be learning as I go along. That is, I don't find he specifically mentions any 'that school tells us this' or 'this school tells us that'.  No worries though. I’m thinking, too, as I share what I find, you may be able to glean answers as I go along with the posts.