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Christian artists and theologians as symbols of the Virgin Mary. But in 4:13– 15, she is also

likened to sweet fruits and aromatic spices:

Your branches are an orchard

of pomegranate trees heavy with fruit,

flowering henna and spikenard,

spikenard^91 and saffron, cane and cinnamon,

with every tree of frankincense,

myrhh and aloes,

all the rare spices.^92

The Bridegroom also compares her to a stately date palm, tying her to earlier Near Eastern

goddesses: “That day you seemed to me a tall palm tree, and your breasts the clusters of its

fruit ” (7:8– 9). The bridegroom continues:

I said in my heart,

let me climb into that palm tree

and take hold of its branches.

And oh, may your breasts be like clusters

of grapes on a vine, the scent

of your breath like apricots,

your mouth like good wine—^93

Since date palms lack branches, the young lover presumably refers to the female rachis

with its closed flower buds. Although botanical imagery is applied to both lovers in the

poem, the majority of erotic, botanical metaphors, including the garden itself, are associated

with the young woman, as summarized by Ariel and Chana Bloch:

Throughout the Song the garden is the symbol of the Shulamite and her sexuality: she

is the “locked garden” (4:12), inaccessible to anyone but her lover; he alone is invited

to the garden (4:16), and he alone enters it (5:1). He describes her as a “garden spring”

(4:15) and addresses her as “the one who dwells in the gardens” (8:13). Only she is asso-

ciated with both vines and pomegranates in erotic contexts (1:6, 4:13, 7:9,13, 8:2); the

only fruit associated with him is the apricot.^94

According to a passage in the Mishnah, the first- century Rabbi Simeon ben Gamaliel

stated that the Song of Songs was often sung by the young women of Jerusalem during har-

vest festivals as they danced and sang in the vineyards, trying to attract the notice of the

young men (Ta’anit 4:8).^95 Perhaps the Song came to be so beloved it was included in the

Bible by popular demand. It is widely believed that the Jewish biblical canon was probably

decided around the end of the first century ce.^96 But before the Song could become scrip-

ture, something had to be done about its erotic content.

Philo (20 bce– 50 ce), the neo- Platonic Jewish philosopher from Alexandria, and other

first- century Jewish scholars promulgated the idea that all the stories of the Bible had hidden