Is Canticles an Adonis Litany

IN VARIOUS QUARTERS it is felt that Canticles must be something else than what it seems to be. The attempt is made to vindicate once more its religious character. If it is not an allegory of the love of Yahwe and Israel, or of Christ and the church, it must at least be a litany of some pagan cult. It cannot be allowed to be simply a collection of secular lyrics, singing the love of man and woman. It is not an epithalamium celebrating the marriage of Solomon to the Egyptian princess, or a florilegium used at peasant weddings, where the bridegroom is hailed as king and the bride as queen. Nor is it a drama in which Solomon's love is scorned by a country maiden who remains faithful to her shepherd lover amid the seductions of the royal harem. The book would not have found a place in the canon, it is thought, unless it had originally been written for some religious purpose. Already in 1906, Wilhelm Erbt I suggested that Canticles is a collection of paschal songs of Canaanitish origin. It describes the love of the sun-god Tammuz, called Dod or Shelem, and the moongoddess Ishtar, figuring under the name of Shalmith. If for some time this view met with little favor, the reason may have been that a reaction was setting in against the astral theories of Winckler and his followers. N. du Jassy's 2 attempt to explain Canticles as a Hebrew translation of certain Osirian litanies made in Alexandria in the Ptolemaic period failed to attract much attention. But a fresh impetus toward the further development of Erbt's theory has recently been given by the publication of a catalogue of lovesongs found at Assur in the course of the excavations carried on by the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft.3 These ballads bid fair to

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