Song of Songs: The Bible's Gay Love Poem

Michael J. Bayly, the author of The Wild Reed (http://thewildreed.blogspot.com/), has an interesting post for Wednesday, April 02, 2008, that ought to have the fundie wingnuts foaming at the mouth. The post looks at the fact that the highly charged love poem that we now call the Song of Songs was originally addressed by Asher, one of Solomon’s sons, to Caleh, a shepherd-soldier. OMG, a man expressing his romantic love to another man!

Obviously, the fundies would have their eyes glaze over at the reality that (a) same sex love is extolled and (b) their "inerrant" Bible in fact does NOT support homophobia as they calim and that the current versions favored by the fundies are NOT consistent with earlier versions that had not been altered to please the sensibilities of later writers/translators. Thus, for fundamentalists, the Bible becomes inerrant except when it needs to be re-written to fit their agenda. For gays, this book provides evidence that our love for our same sex lovers and partners is not something condemned by the Bible. The book is apparently out of print but copies exist and would obviously make interesting reading. Here are some highlights from Michael Bayly's post:

I’d like to share the following review by Jim Kepner of Dr. Paul R. Johnson’s (regrettably out-of-print) book, The Song of Songs, A Gay Love Poem (Fidelity Press, 1995).According to Johnson, the highly charged love poem that we now call the Song of Songs was originally addressed by Asher, one of Solomon’s sons, to Caleh, a shepherd-soldier.

The Song of Songs, a Gay Love Poem, gives an amazing new turn to the highly erotic Old Testament love poem in the Bible, inaccurately called “The Song of Solomon,” which has been a mystery and often a scandal to Jews and Christians alike. Homophobic religious writers have, among other things, wiggled about trying to explain a supposed woman with male parts and male roles.

Dr. Paul R. Johnson, an evangelical minister who has written extensively about fundamentalists and gays, and who has long been involved in the Southern California gay movement, has labored for twenty years with the original Hebrew, finally producing a translation aided by fragmentary pre-Masoretic texts which clear up the mystery. His 144 page book discusses how the text, originally written about 920 B.C.E., evolved from a frankly homophilic love poem sung in homes and taverns at a time when the Hebrews were not yet publicly homophobic (such poems were found in many ancient Near Eastern cultures), to the editing millenia later by Masorete scribes, who produced the presently confused text.

A more accurate version appeared in several earlier scraps of the song found among the Dead Sea Scrolls in Qumram cave #4. The cover-up began in the first line, when the name Asher, one of Solomon’s many sons, apparently black, was read as a preposition instead of a proper name. In the second verse, the Revised Standard Version of the Bible notes that the pronouns for the beloved, given as neuter in the text, are really masculine. Most Hebrew scholars admit parenthetically, that the speaker-lover in 85% of the poem is clearly male, as is the beloved. Yet all modern versions except that by Rev. Dr. Johnson make it appear as a heterosexual love drama. Direct quotes show otherwise: 4:10,11:

How delightful you are Caleh,

My lover-man, my other half.
Your pleasing masculine love is better than wine.
The smell of your body is better than perfume.
Your moustache is waxed with honeycomb.Honey and milk are under your tongue.
The scent of your clothing is like the smell of Lebanon.

Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth,
for your love-making is sweeter than wine.
In his delightful shade I sit,
and his fruit is sweet to my taste.
My love is mine and I am his.

[The thesis of the book] gets to the heart of the question of whether the Hebrews and early Christians were fundamentally homophobic, or whether, as John Boswell has maintained, homophobia was a later addition. Johnson has consulted with many Hebrew scholars, who reluctantly concede the validity of his revolutionary word-for-word translation.

As this writer, as well as Dr. Johnson and others have noted, there are many wife-purchase stories in the Bible, but the only true love stories are same-gender.The Song of Songs now stands as the most explicit homoerotic love poem in the Bible, with clear naming of this thing going into that thing. Johnson’s small book is a must for all Jewish or Christian gays, though many might be too timid to abandon conventional hetero mistranslations. This book is also very useful for gays who wish to answer religious homophobes.