Solomon's Vineyard: Literary and Linguistic Studies in the Song of Songs.

• Author: Dearman, J. Andrew
• Position: Book review

Solomon's Vineyard: Literary and Linguistic Studies in the Song of Songs. By Sam B. NOEGELI and GARY A. RENDSBURG. Ancient Israel and Its Literature, vol. 1. Atlanta: SOCIETY OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE, 2009. Pp. xiv + 267. $34.95 (paper).

This volume is comprised of four individual studies devoted to the poetic Song of Songs (hereafter Song). A brief conclusion draws together the essential claims of the four chapters as well as tentatively advancing additional ones. The volume also helpfully contains eight indices for interpreters who wish to check (or recheck) a particular matter: primary texts, authors and reference works, pre-modern authors, words and phrases, languages, subjects, names, and toponyms.

Chapter one presents the case that the Song contains Israelian Hebrew (hereafter IH). Specialists will recognize that the identification of IH, defined as "the dialect of those regions that formed the kingdom of Israel" (p. 3), has been a research project of both authors over a period of years. In various studies they have developed criteria for distinguishing between the dominant dialect of the Hebrew Bible, Judahite Hebrew, and the less common IH, and they apply them to the case of the Song in this one. These are accomplished scholars, well aware of the history of scholarship and conversant with other options for identifying the linguistic particularities of the Song. They note, for example, that in a previous generation of scholarship S. R. Driver had proposed something similar for the Song and that others have identified the linguistic particularities of the Song with Aramaic influence. For the latter this typically includes the conclusion that the Song is a post-exilic work. Noegel and Rendsburg do not deny the affinities with Aramaic, but propose that they are more particularly Israelian and that the Song is of an earlier date.

Chapter two examines alliteration in the poetry of the Song, defined as "the collocation of the same or similar consonants in two or more words in close proximity to each other" (p. 64). Assonance, with which alliteration might be confused, is defined by the authors as "the effect created by like-sounding vowels" (p. 64). They conclude, rightly according to their criteria, that the Song is a "veritable tapestry," shining with "alliterative artistry" (p. 106).

Chapter three is an examination of variation in the poetry of the Song. What interests Noegel and Rendsburg is the role of variation in repetition across a...