k in Its present torm is not fasliion, Builde is well awf here and there short pieces which [lossess, in his
* This approach of the bridegroom is recalled, u Budae ex- pressly notes, by the figure in Ps 19fl.
f Samson had" thirty such 'companions' about him (Jg 14"), who were headed by onf who nod the S7>ec!al title of the ' friend ' of the bridegroom (cf. Jg U* and also Jn 8-'').
1 Their greeting addressed to the approaching bridegroon (3>>) finds a parallel in the parable of Ut ilA".
594
SOISG OF SONGS
SONG OF SONGS
opinion, small poetic value, which he holds it to be impossible to bring into any connexion with the surrounding and originally independent songs and soiiglets. One trace of the later origin of these he linds, aliove all, in the circumstance that the composer of them misunderstood the real meanin*;, and in particular the symbolically in- tendetl expressions, in older passages and took these in a literal sense.
The most strikinfr instance of this Is discovered by Budde in
48, where the purely tyjiical Lebanon of vv.n. 15 js alleged to be converted into the real Lebanon and associated with other mountain heights. The author of 48 is thus supposed to have been STuilty of a crude misunderstanding, and it is declared that, when closely examined, the list of mountains is so little in place and yields so little sense, white the whole verse is so weak from the poetical point of view, that it is most natural to infer • misunderstanding^ and insertion/ But this is a purely subjec- tive verdict. It may reasonably be asked how any one was likely to introduce such an addition at this particular place. And what compels us to understand the names of the mountains here, 'the lions' dens' and *the leopards' mountains,' literally and not symbolically? This symbolical sense is as sxiitable to them as it is to ' the clefts of the rock ' and ' the covert of the eteep place' in 2l*. Other sentences which are supposed to have orig-inated in a similar way are found by Budde in S*-*, cl. 2*6. He also holds, strangely enough, that 2^$-^ is an addition introduced on account of vM, for plainly (?), be argues, the words ' Hark, my beloved 1 ' (v.^a^) should be connected immedi- ately with the words of v.t*t> ('there he stands behind our wall ')• But here a^-ain the question may be asked, Why should it have occurred to any one to insert the wonis in v.s, which at least are so evidently poetical and out and out original?
A similar judgment is passed by Eudde upon 8?*, cf. 2*f ; 85 is due to a misunderstanding of 3^. He makes a special allusion to fii ■■*, arguing that what was intended in 6S- 9 to serve simply as a transition to the wa^/otlhe bridegroom is here transferred to the sphere of actuality, and that the figures borrowed from the plant-world (5^3) are likewise misunderstood and taken in their literal sense, the beloved becoming the gardener who has gone into his garden, etc. But, says Budde, if the Shulainmite really knew this, why does she search so long for her lover and call for help to find him? Here, again, 'genuine phrases' like 17f. -2,16 QUI are supposed to have been worked up in a way opposed to their proper meaning. It is quite natural that Budde, with his view of the Song of Songs, can make nothing of these verses (61-3), which beyond a doubt are as genuine as 27- 8. AVe must ask here once more, How can it have occurred to a later editor to introduce such sentences? What motive could have led him to do so?* Even Budde feels the above difficulty, but, for all that, he i8 unable to give a satisfactory answer to the question. ' What reasons led him [the redactor to whom we are supposed to owe these strange interpola- tions] . . . what suppositions and intentions, of coui-se we do not know.* Of course, if an author is to be held capable of Buch misunderstandings, it is dithcult to give any satisfactory account of the motives that actuated him. And yet Budde repeats that one can recognize ' the plain effort' of the redactor ' to introduce itwceinent and action where none were.'
The author of these later additions is held, then, to have meant to bring Tnovement and action into the whole work. May he then have been guided bj* draniatizinrf aims? May it be that elsewhere too he is not without responsibility for the present form of the Song of Songs, but actually brought movement and action into the material of the work, i.e. that he perhaps worked up the latter from the dramatical point of view? These ques- tions are very readily suggested by Budde's own words. True, he does not actually raise them, although he afterwards concedes tliat the addi- tions just described (with which also may have been coupled trilling alterations and corruptions of the text) have ^iven to tlie dramatical view of Canticles *a certain justification from antiquity downwards, because separated matters were thereby connected and a certain inovement and development brought in,* Of course he no longer gives the dramatical view the benoiit of this excuse, now that he has Bhown what the Song of Songs really is.