That's a question that people of faith, Jews and Christians alike, have been asking for more than 2,000 years. Most believers in ancient times couldn't handle what many scholars today insist is the truth about this book.
And the truth is that it's an erotic celebration of love between a man and a woman who graphically praise the physical features of each other and trade fantasies about making love. Though their words aren't obscene, they are unapologetically sensual.
Too sensual, it seems, for most believers until the 1800's. Until then, most read the book as an allegory. They though the symbolic meaning was more important than the literal meaning.
For many Jews the Song was a symbol of God's love for Israel. The man in the story is God. The woman is Israel. The bedroom is the land now called Israel. The kissing is God giving Israel the laws they're to follow. And the woman's confession of having black skin is Israel's confession of sin - worshipping idols.
Christians did much the same thing, with the man usually representing Jesus. Even John Wesley, a preacher in the late 1700's, insisted the Song "could not with decency" refer to a literal man and woman. "This book is to be understood allegorically concerning that spiritual love and marriage, which is between Christ and His church."*
ASL Bible DVD coming 2011!
*excerpts from "The Complete Guide to the Bible"
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