Hi Jaywill,
I agree with Doctor Bill and NJ on this. I think you are reading too much into The Song and it's leading you to draw some highly speculative and rather tenuous conclusions.
1.) Man is made in the image of God. His joys and enjoyments in some way reflect the being of God.
What, all of them? Mankind enjoys some pretty freaky activities. Plenty of people take pleasure in torture, murder and rape. Do these pleasures reflect God?
2.) I admit that there is no explicit claim in the New Testament that I can think of that Song of Songs concerns Christ and His church.
But there is no such claim that Joseph is a type of Christ either. Yet when we examine the life of Joseph there are uncanny similiarities.
This is my main bone of contention with you.
There may well be similarities between Joseph and Christ, but that does not mean that the story of Joseph foreshadows Christ. We can draw parallels between the story of Odin sacrificing himself on the branches of the world ash and Christ, or we can draw parallels between Prometheus sacrificing himself to give humankind fire and the Christ story. Does this mean that the Prometheus story is intended to foreshadow Christ? Of course not. It simply means that many myths and stories share common themes.
Just because we can draw parallels between two stories does not mean that those parallels were an intentional part of the text, even if one accepts those texts as being divinely inspired.
3.) Jesus said that something greater than Solomon was there when He was there. This indicates that what Solomon was is a shadow of the substance of a greater one.
Or it may simply mean that Jesus is more a important figure than Solomon. You taking the explanation that best fits your theory and running with it, too eagerly in my opinion.
4.) The whole Bible ends with a romantic scene of a marriage between the redeeming God and His people formed into a Bride and Wife.
If the book of Revalations strikes you as romantic, I'm glad I'm not in a relationship with you.
But to the apostles and prophets and teachers who are responsible to teach the depths of God's eternal plan it is necessary to dive below the surface.
How is one to know then, if one's conjectures are correct? This type of reading of the texts is highly speculative and the authors are no longer with us to confirm or deny your theories.
My point is that for some of us there is the need to be led deeper into its significance.
That strikes me as reasonable, but how do you know that the Song has any deeper significance? Maybe it is simply what it appears to be; a celebration of the erotic. All the specific analogies that draw from the text seem rather thin to me. You seem willing to draw conclusions that bear absolutely no relation to the passages you cite, except through your rose-tinted spectacles. If we accept that the Bible says one thing but means something completely different, then what limit is there on its meaning? It could mean anything.
You're just stretching this too far, to breaking point in fact. The Song of Solomon stands out as one of the good bits in the Old Testament. Why spoil it by trying to make it say something that it clearly does not?
Added by Edit; Ooh, I just found a lovely quote!
"When men wish to construct or support a theory, how they torture facts into their service!"
John Mackay,
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, 1852
Edited by Granny Magda, : No reason given.
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