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YMMV / Song of Songs

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  • Best Known for the Fanservice: While the Song of Solomon does contain some fairly explicit references to sex it's pretty tame by modern standards and does have other content besides the lovey-dovey stuff. What do most modern readers recognize it as? "Oh, hey! It's that part of the Bible that gets borderline pornographic at times! Cool!"
  • Epileptic Trees: The interpretations of the book as an Allegory for God's love for His people strongly tend this way, and can get very creative in coming up with spiritual meanings for sexual imagery. Especially the early Christian theologian Origen, who among other things interpreted a reference to the beloved's two breasts as symbolizing the Old and New Covenants.
  • Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: As unlikely as it may seem on a face-value reading, the interpretation of the erotic poems as spiritual metaphors has been the predominant one throughout much of theological history, both Jewish and Christian.
  • Values Resonance: The poems have a positive view of sex, lust, and a woman's place in a sexual relationship. If read secularly, the poem is about how good and sexually fulfilling consensual, mutually-pleasuring sex between two equal partners who truly love each other is, with the woman repeating several times to the "daughters of Israel" (and "daughters" specifically) to not rush into love. The relationship depicted in it is way more healthy than most modern erotica, even, not bad for an ancient text written in an era where women's rights weren't very high priority. And if using the Love Triangle interpretation, there's also possibly the message of "Girls, don't marry for money, but for the one you truly want to spend the rest of your life with". The poem is often seen favorably by feminists for these reasons.


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