שיר השירים

Shir ha-Shirim....

The Song of Solomon has always been a favorite, and I haven't read it in a long time, but I did think about it the other day, musing about poetry and prose and things written recently, things written long ago, and just how important is the written word. I don't mind telling you that my most fav writer is my DH, SGTex. His stories absolutely rock, I kid you not.

Anyway, he and I were talking about closed-mindedness, censorship and such things the other morning. I briefly touched on the destruction of the library at Alexandria, Egypt. I remember how sad I was as a child in school when I learned about those events and thought about how much we might never know, what treasures of thought and ideas will never be discovered, since it all went up in smoke. My teacher told me to not be so upset, that it was a very long time ago. But you see, at that time in my life the library was my most favorite place in the world, and I couldn't imagine it all disappearing on me, YKWIM?

According to Wikipedia, destruction is said to have happened not merely once, but four times: Julius Caesar's fire in The Alexandrian War in 48 BC, the attack of Aurelian in the third century AD, the decree of Theophilus in AD 391 in response to the Emporor Theodosius ordering the destruction of all pagan temples, and then the Muslim conquest in AD 642 or thereafter.


A crying shame.

So, what does the Song of Solomon have to do with anything? Nothing, except I'm wondering if somehow it accidentally got left in and unintentionally became part of the Canon of scripture. Maybe the person responsible for censorship was actually a nonreader and didn't get past the title (or else he had a thing for a hot love story), so there it remains.

Like I said, it's a good read....

Shawn
****

photo courtesy of: Tabitha of MyHeartBeads on Etsy