Hi both ...
'fraid i can't shed much light here, as it's not one of my topics ... just wanted to lodge a marker before we all get too carried away.
Recent scholarship has posited the Song might have derived from the cult of Ishtar and Tammuz, which pushes it way back ... and perhaps back to 'divine' marriage ceremonies in which the king stood in place of a god, but the cultic/mythological theory does not carry too much weight with scholars apparently, as similarity of expression is not a strong enough argument in this case, as 'tha language of love' is universal.
What is more unconvincing is the assumption that a strictly monotheist and somewhat moralistic people should adopt the hyms of a fertility cult to overcome their inability to write their own poetry ... especially when compared to the Psalms and other material.
Generally a straighforward literary interpretation of the Song is favoured — when the Prophets resort to allegory, they usually signal their intention. The Psalms are strictly liturgical, whereas the Song was sung at marriage feasts into the 1st century.
In fact sexuality is demythologised (contrary to Canaanite culture which saw sex in relationship to fertility deities) and here established as forming a stable relationship based on mutual affection ... the Song champions the idea of 'love' in a way that was unique and laid the foundation of Jewish life, Christian agape, European chivalry, etc.
The closest parallels are in the love songs of ancient Egypt, which are also literary compositions.
Apparently, although the themes are timeless, the Aramaic structure, and especially the borrowing from Persian and Greek, dates the copy we have as postexilic, and its place of composition certainly Palestine.
That is not to reject Flow's notion of its age ... the version we have might well be a reworking of a Song that is as old as love itself ... The Book of Proverbs, one of the youngest books in the Hebrew Scriptures, no doubt contains words and wisdoms older than Israel ... sayings already old, told to Abraham when he was a boy...
The strongest argument is there is no allegorical interpretation of the Song prior to Christianity other than the love of Israel for her God, and the love of God for Israel — a theme visible in Hosea and onwards. So most exegetes follow that line. There is nothing in the Q'mran finds, for example, to suggest any other allegorical interpretation.
In Christianity, the love was transposed to the love between Christ and the soul, and Christ and the Church, and Mary was and is regarded as a figure of the Church, with all that such implies.
With Origen, of course, 'all bets are off', as he was the master of allegorical interpretation, and then some ... the problem being, once you start, where do you stop? As someone once said, once's you're rolling, then every pebble along the road the Good Samaritan walked can stand for something ...
However one chooses to interpret the Song, in a Christian context there is no surpassing the core idea of Christ/Church, Christ/Soul ... St John of the Cross being perhaps the most famous example of the genre.
In all our speculations, we must ensure that we do not fabricate some notion of a female deity around the Blessed Virgin, that would be to reduce her to a cypher, her child to a Docetic illusion, and the human soul to an empty vessel.
"What God has not assumed, God has not saved"
St Gregory of Nyssa
Thomas
