Masters Degrees (Old Testament)
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Browsing Masters Degrees (Old Testament) by Author "Oosthuizen, Marlene"
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Item Open Access Reading Song of Songs as wisdom literature: an interpretive approach integrating sexuality and spirituality(University of the Free State, 2014-06) Oosthuizen, Marlene; Snyman, S. D.English: This history of interpretation of Song of Songs clearly shows interpreters’ struggle to understand this blatantly sexual text in the midst of Holy Scripture. The widely divergent interpretations indicate how hermeneutical keys are constructed according to the context, theology, and/or sexual ideologies of the interpreters. In a society that was hostile towards the body and towards women, the Song of Songs was interpreted spiritually for centuries by means of allegory. According to this line of interpretation Song of Songs portrays the love relationship between God, as the male lover, and the church, synagogue, soul, or Mary as the female lover. In the wake of the Enlightenment, the literal meaning of the text moved sharply into focus and a new wave of sexual interpretations abounded ending in a vague, a-theological, appreciative approach for a text that seems to be nothing more than an anthology of secular love poems. The inability of interpreters to cross the dualistic spiritual/sexual divide is a reflection of a serious problem in society where people still view sexuality as secular and removed from the realm of spirituality. The traditional and contemporary lines of interpretations of Song of Songs are at an impasse – spiritual interpretations ignore the sexual content and sexual interpretations provide no theological meaning. This research project explored the possibility that Song of Songs can be read as part of the corpus of biblical wisdom literature corpus and by doing so, can contribute to the integration of sexuality and spirituality. A list of characteristics of wisdom literature was compiled by examining the views of prominent wisdom scholars. The list consists of three main divisions, namely: 1) general characteristics; 2) literary characteristics; and 3) characteristics of content. Literary characteristics are further divided into subsections exploring form, vocabulary, rhetoric, and metaphors. Content is explored in terms of Solomonic tradition, subject matter, cosmology, anthropology, and scepticism and critique. Eighteen characteristics are identified and formulated in question forms to test against the text of Song of Songs. When the list of wisdom characteristics was applied to Song of Songs, it was found that Song of Songs performed exceptionally well in most instances. It was concluded that it is justified to read Song of Songs as part of the canonical wisdom literature. 102 Reading Song of Songs as wisdom literature presents us with an opportunity to provide a frame of reference that can curb interpretational extremities. A wisdom reading of Song of Songs also offers a stable centre of theological focus. Teaching the Bible-reading communities to read Song of Songs as wisdom literature affords us the opportunity to empower people to experience a God-conscious sexuality and a deeply sensual spirituality.