Das Hohelied als jüdische Version der Liebesdichtung innerhalb eines gemeinsamen intellektuellen Hintergrundes in der hellenistischen Zeit

What is it about?

This essay is intended to prove that the Song of Songs (Canticles) is a writing product of the Hellenistic and Jewish intellectual background, which takes up motifs from Egypt, Mesopotamia, and is based on the Hellenistic poetry from Greece–Sicily–Alexandria. If so, its basic literary forms (Paraklausithyron, runaway love, descriptive songs of man and woman) were derived from the Hellenism of Alexandria e.g., Theocrit and Moschus or its predecessors as an amalgam of these cultures. This conclusion is further supported by findings from archaeologically established preliminary stages. Especially the Qumran evidence – as Torleif Elgvin has proved this, alongside with considerations of Peter Flint and Emanuel Tov – contains forerunners of the biblical text. They thus provide conclusive evidence of the dating of Canticles.

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