The
status and function of canon are much in discussion these days. Is “canonical”
an achieved status or does the term describe an inherent authority that is
later recognized by the people of God? In other words, does the Church make the
canon or does the canon make the Church? . . . I will now address the issue of
the external attestation to the canonical status of the Song of Songs. We begin
with a restatement of Rabbi Aqibas’s famous exclamation: “God forbid!—no man in
Israel ever disputed about the Song of Songs [that he should say] that it does
not render the hands unclean, for all the ages are not worth the day on which
the Song of Songs was given to Israel; for all the Writings are holy, but the
Song of Songs is in the Holy of Holies.” Of course, from the tone, we know that
this statement was uttered in the midst of a disagreement about the status of
the Song, and apparently it was Rabbi Yose who was on the receiving end.
Nonetheless,
it is fair to say that the Song was one of a handful of books about which disagreement
festered. There are difficulties reconstructing the nature of the dispute
because of the obscurity of the ancient language used to refer to a book’s
canonicity. Most scholars, however, conclude that the Song was well situated
within the anon as early as we have mention of such matters. For instance, it
is explicitly included in the canons of Aquila, Melito, and Tertullian in the
second century A.D., and it is likely implied in Josephus’s mention of
twenty-two books and 2 Esdras’s (4 Ezra) citation of twenty-four books. The
latter probably provides testimony that reflects opinion as early as the second
century B.C. However, the rabbis raised questions from time to time. These
questions likely arose because of the secular nature of the book. The dispute concerned
whether the Song “defiled the hands” or not, a phrase about which there is some
controversy. Most understand the phrase to signify what we call canonicity
because its holy nature means that touching it required ritual cleansing. Thus,
when a passage in the Talmud doubts that the song defiles the hands, it is
questioning the book’s authoritative status. However, some scholars as
explained by M. J. Broyde, argue that a denial that the song defiles the hands
is not a rejection of a book’s place in the canon but rather an acknowledgment
that the book (along with Ecclesiastes and Esther) nowhere uses the
Tetragrammaton to refer to God. The nomenclature, again according to Broyde,
has to do with protecting scrolls that contain God’s name from being nibbled by
rodents and other animals since scholars ate while studying the scrolls or
because the scrolls were stored with sacred food. Such nomenclature causes
students of the sacred scrolls to wash their hands for fear that they will soil
those scrolls with food and the name of Yahweh be defaced by hungry rodents.
In
summary, there is no doubt that the Songs was well situated in the canon as early
as we have evidence (2 Esdras, Josephus, Aquila, Melito, Tertullian). Though a
significant undercurrent of doubt expressed, especially if “defile the hands”
is equated with what we call canonicity and not with the simple recognition of
the absence of the Tetragrammaton. However, we do not know why the Song was
first placed in the canon. Christians, of course, simply followed Jewish
acceptance of the book, but the process of its inclusion in a Jewish canon is
long lost to us. Many think it is either the connection with Solomon or else
the allegorical interpretation of the Song that won the day. However, there are
putative Solomonic writings that never made it into the mainstream canon
(Wisdom of Solomon), and it is much more likely that the allegorization of the
Song was a product of the book’s inclusion in the canon rather than vice versa.
(Tremper Longman III, Song of Songs [The New International Commentary on
the Old Testament; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2001], 56, 57-58)
