Queer Theory and Biblical Studies Research Papers (original) (raw)

Countless people have interpreted and experimented with the Song of Songs over the centuries and millennia since it was written down in the 4th and 3rd centuries BC. Thus, the Song of Songs has become part of the history of sexuality.... more

Countless people have interpreted and experimented with the Song of Songs over the centuries and millennia since it was written down in the 4th and 3rd centuries BC. Thus, the Song of Songs has become part of the history of sexuality. This significance of the Song is relevant for queer critique in two ways: Sexuality in this text is normalized and regulated. However, upon close inspection, all sorts of subversive, offensive, and irritating things are found in this history. Ironically, outrage at a transgressive use of the Song of Songs is one of the earliest things we know of this text and its performance. The rabbis deemed the Song of Songs holy. However, not everyone seems to have shared this judgment. Rabbi Akiva (d. 135 CE) is credited in the Tosefta with the following statement: "Those who vibrate their voices with the Song of Songs at festivals and treat it as a song have no part in the world to come" (tSan. 12,10).
Moreover, in the Talmud, the rabbis express: "The rabbis taught: Whoever sings a verse from [the book of] Song of Songs as a song, or reads a verse of Scripture in an inn at an improper time, brings misfortune upon the world" (bTalmud San. 101a). The Rabbis sought to combat an unworthy recitation of the Song of Songs still points to how widespread the singing of the Song of Songs over a beer in a tavern or celebration may have been. The Song of Songs and what is done with it ticks off.
Offending, outraging, stirring up are powerful affects that can become the beginning of new perspectives. Thus, when queer theology questions ideologies around sexuality and corporeality and seeks new ways of unbounded love, then the Song of Songs virtually imposes itself.
But what is the Song of Songs about; male fantasies, autonomous female sexuality, queer love, heteronormative marriage, a Garden of Eden version 2.0, the union of man and God, or just plain good sex? Since this text became part of what we now call the canon of the Hebrew Bible, people have read all this and far more in it. The Song of Songs has been and remains irresistible to readers throughout the centuries. It grips them and beguiles them, awakening a desire and longing for the irresistibly divine and yearning for the irresistibly human. Hence, my questions are, first, how did interpreters of the Song normalize sexualities in and with the text? Second, to what instabilities and ambiguities in the text and its interpretations can queer readings connect?