Song of Songs at SBL

I’ve finally found a chance to go through the programme for SBL and I’m encouraged to see that there are a number of papers on the Song:
Saturday, 9.00-11.30 am: F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, The Ekphrastic Image in Song 5:9-16
Saturday, 1.00-3.30 pm: Me, Poetic Structure of Song 7:12-14
Saturday, 4.00-7.00 pm: Al Wolters, Ann Francis (1738-1800) on the [...]

It’s not too late…

There are still spaces available for the study day on the Song of Songs, hosted by Emmanuel Evangelical Church on October 24th. More info is here. The day will be useful for anyone interested in learning more about this part of God’s word, whether pastor, student, or ordinary Christian. Everyone is welcome.

Pretending to be a biblioblog

There has been lots of hoo-ha recently in the biblioblog world (I was trying to type biblioblogosphere but my fingers just wouldn’t let me use such an awful word) about the lack of women who blog biblical studies. Some people have compiled lists of female bibliobloggers, some of which include me.
Um, okay. On [...]

Never noticed that before

Thus the principal clue to the meaning of the Song has, to the best of my knowledge, never been noticed, namely, that there are twenty-six occurrences of the term ‘my beloved’ in the Song, and that twenty-six is the numerical value of the divine Name, YHWH.
From Sr. Edmée Kingsmill’s unpublished PhD thesis, The Song [...]

The Poetry of Paradise

A study day on the Song of Songs? Sign me up now!
Look, there will be sessions on:
Poetry and emotion in the Song of Songs
Canonical connections to the Song of Songs (oh, someone should write a PhD on that…)
Proclaiming the Song of Songs
Behold, he comes: the eschatology of the Song of Songs
Go here, [...]

Polygamy in the Song

David Williams has some helpful things to say about the harem in the Song of Songs, and the problem it draws attention to in application to contemporary society as he suggests. None of us are Israelite kings, after all. And since the Song makes it quite clear that it is better to have [...]

Carrot and stick

If ever I finish this PhD, I rather think I would like this by way of celebration:

If you click through to the website, you can see an enlarged version.
More urgently, my supervisor is going to be in Cambridge in less than two weeks time and I am supposed to have finished the revised version of [...]

Song of Songs for kids

A little while ago, someone left a question on the ‘Ask Ros‘ page (which is, after all, what it’s there for!) asking about explaining the Song to younger people:

I am wondering if you have ever had to explain SOS to young folk. I find myself in the situation, where this teenager asked me why this [...]

Preaching the Song

John MacArthur has an excellent series of posts on the hows and how nots of preaching the Song:
The Rape of Solomon’s Song Part 1 addresses the problem of the Song being used both as a descriptive and, even more frighteningly, as a prescriptive sexual text.
Part 2 points out that just as the Song is deliberately [...]

Today’s conversational theology

In the kitchen this morning I met Onesimus who, in addition to having a fantastic name, is also doing some interesting research into the history of marriage in the church. Apparently, the notion that marriages should happen in churches, performed by ministers, is a mediaeval one. Thomas Aquinas made the case for marriage [...]