song of solomon

[chariots_of_iron]

I am always amused when I hear fundies say the Song of Solomon is a "beautiful love story". It is smut. Personally, I dont see anything wrong with that but since fundies are always railing against porn, why do they say nothing about this?

"Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine."

"I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste"

"My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for him"

There are several others like this. It's certainly not something you would teach Sunday school kids

[cnorman18]

MODERATOR REMINDER
Same caution as on your other thread about the term "Fundies." This could be an interesting topic for debate, but if you can't approach it with civility and respect for points of view that differ from your own, it doesn't much matter how interesting it is. This forum isn't a venue for rock-throwing.

I am always amused when I hear fundies say the Song of Solomon is a "beautiful love story". It is smut. Personally, I dont see anything wrong with that but since fundies are always railing against porn, why do they say nothing about this?

"Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine."

"I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste"

"My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for him"

There are several others like this. It's certainly not something you would teach Sunday school kids

[chariots_of_iron]

MODERATOR REMINDER
Same caution as on your other thread about the term "Fundies." This could be an interesting topic for debate, but if you can't approach it with civility and respect for points of view that differ from your own, it doesn't much matter how interesting it is. This forum isn't a venue for rock-throwing.

I am always amused when I hear fundies say the Song of Solomon is a "beautiful love story". It is smut. Personally, I dont see anything wrong with that but since fundies are always railing against porn, why do they say nothing about this?

"Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine."

"I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste"

"My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for him"

There are several others like this. It's certainly not something you would teach Sunday school kids

Sorry. I didnt intend this to be a personal attack. I am simply stating I fell the song of solomon is pornographic.

[cnorman18]

MODERATOR REMINDER
Same caution as on your other thread about the term "Fundies." This could be an interesting topic for debate, but if you can't approach it with civility and respect for points of view that differ from your own, it doesn't much matter how interesting it is. This forum isn't a venue for rock-throwing.

I am always amused when I hear fundies say the Song of Solomon is a "beautiful love story". It is smut. Personally, I dont see anything wrong with that but since fundies are always railing against porn, why do they say nothing about this?

"Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine."

"I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste"

"My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for him"

There are several others like this. It's certainly not something you would teach Sunday school kids

Sorry. I didnt intend this to be a personal attack. I am simply stating I fell the song of solomon is pornographic.

I'm going to cut you some slack here, but disputing or otherwise commenting on moderator interventions is also against the forum rules. I'd suggest you review them, and the C & A forum guidelines as well, if you haven't -- or maybe even if you have.

'm getting the impression that your intent here is to gibe and mock, not to debate. That's not acceptable. Please try to maintain a civil tone.

[Darias]

You aren't the first in this forum to deem it pornographic. I personally find nothing wrong with it (I also don't personally find it arousing). Most people who believe in Biblical inerrancy, etc. just see it as God teaching a husband and wife how to properly love each other. Most aren't that offended by it.

I remember John Hagee gave a sermon on it. He was reading it and sighing in a creepy way -- everyone laughed. But hey...

Other than that, I see it as a love story -- similar to that of poems written in Arabia before the advent of Islam.

It's a very human document, and the literature can be appreciated by anyone, liberals, fundamentalists, non-theists, etc.

It's probably not a good idea to teach kids this stuff in Sunday School, then again, it's not a good idea to read a lot of stuff mentioned in the Bible to kids.

[cnorman18]

I am always amused when I hear fundies say the Song of Solomon is a "beautiful love story". It is smut. Personally, I dont see anything wrong with that but since fundies are always railing against porn, why do they say nothing about this?

"Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine."

"I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste"

"My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for him"

There are several others like this. It's certainly not something you would teach Sunday school kids

And now, speaking as a member, not a moderator; I would say that the Song of Songs is romantic, even mildly erotic in places; but if you think it's "pornographic" or "smut," you must not get out much. Personally, I think it's lovely, even if it's not for first-graders. I find the repeated expression in the books of the Kings for "every male," as translated in the King James Version, much more distasteful and inappropriate: "Every one that pisseth against a wall." Gets the point across, but a bit crudely for my taste. Of course, I don't live in the early 17th century.

[chariots_of_iron]

I am always amused when I hear fundies say the Song of Solomon is a "beautiful love story". It is smut. Personally, I dont see anything wrong with that but since fundies are always railing against porn, why do they say nothing about this?

"Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine."

"I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste"

"My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for him"

There are several others like this. It's certainly not something you would teach Sunday school kids

And now, speaking as a member, not a moderator; I would say that the Song of Songs is romantic, even mildly erotic in places; but if you think it's "pornographic" or "smut," you must not get out much. Personally, I think it's lovely, even if it's not for first-graders. I find the repeated expression in the books of the Kings for "every male," as translated in the King James Version, much more distasteful and inappropriate: "Every one that pisseth against a wall." Gets the point across, but a bit crudely for my taste. Of course, I don't live in the early 17th century.

A great many things in the bible are crude but thats not the point here. The point is I dont understand how you can condemn pronography and yet when presented with verses from the bible that are clearly pornographic, you call it a beautiful love story. Now if you have no problem with pornography then we are in agreement.

[cnorman18]

I am always amused when I hear fundies say the Song of Solomon is a "beautiful love story". It is smut. Personally, I dont see anything wrong with that but since fundies are always railing against porn, why do they say nothing about this?

"Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine."

"I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste"

"My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for him"

There are several others like this. It's certainly not something you would teach Sunday school kids

And now, speaking as a member, not a moderator; I would say that the Song of Songs is romantic, even mildly erotic in places; but if you think it's "pornographic" or "smut," you must not get out much. Personally, I think it's lovely, even if it's not for first-graders. I find the repeated expression in the books of the Kings for "every male," as translated in the King James Version, much more distasteful and inappropriate: "Every one that pisseth against a wall." Gets the point across, but a bit crudely for my taste. Of course, I don't live in the early 17th century.

A great many things in the bible are crude but thats not the point here. The point is I dont understand how you can condemn pronography and yet when presented with verses from the bible that are clearly pornographic, you call it a beautiful love story. Now if you have no problem with pornography then we are in agreement.

Did I say I condemn pornography?

There is also "pornography," and then there is PORNOGRAPHY. SOME kinds of pornography I would condemn -- child porn, certainly; some extreme kinds of BDSM, scat, necro, and the like. Then there are other kinds that aren't to my particular taste, like gay and TV porn, but I see nothing innately morally wrong with them. I don't care for rap music, but I don't say that it's EVIL, per se.

Aren't you just fishing for hypocrisy? I don't care to assume hypocrisy on the part of anyone, fundamentalists included, and I don't objectively see anything in the Song of Songs to which any reasonable, non-crazy, non-obsessively prudish person would object. I think that assuming that all conservative Christians are squinting, purse-lipped prudes who blanch at the mere mention of anything sexual has more to do with stereotyping than with real-world observation or personal knowledge.

[JehovahsWitness]

#QUESTION: Is the Song of Solomon pornographic.





Definition of PORNOGRAPHY

" ...the portrayal of explicit sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual excitement and erotic satisfaction." -- Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography


Merriams-Webster
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pornography

1: the depiction of erotic behavior (as in pictures or writing) intended to cause sexual excitement
2
: material (as books or a photograph) that depicts erotic behavior and is intended to cause sexual excitement
3
: the depiction of acts in a sensational manner so as to arouse a quick intense emotional reaction


From the above definitions it seems a common thread of "pornography" is the intent to arouse sexual excitement through visually (or verbally) explicit material.

So, is the Song of Solomon "explicit" and was it written to arose "sexual excitement"?

This of course is a essentially subjective in nature - what one man (or woman) may find "sexually arousing" may in fact leave another cold; and it may for some be a thin line between romantic poetry and pornography. While standards change and the glace of a ladies ankle may have risen a victorian man to a near frenzy, there remains in broad terms some principles that allow us to distinguish between the frank and erotic and the openly pornographic.

AROUSING

While we cannot judge for sure the purpose of the writer, it seems clear that SoS was not written with the intent to "arouse sexually". Expressions sighted such as "Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine."
wouldl no more leave most post-teens people of sound mind sexually aroused than other famous images of kisses.

Art or Pornography?




Society usually limits access to pornography because of its proven harm to young minds, and although intimate kisses may well distress very small children, most adults would need more that the expresson above to classify it as "pornographic"

EXPLICIT

One of the characteristics of pornography (and its younger sister "erotica") is it is usually extremely explicit. It is usually not enough to say "he kissed me" but to express in the crudist of terms what his mouth and tongue was doing. Vague poetic expressions such as "they found expressions of love, sweet as honeyed wine" give way to very graphic descriptions of genitilia, functions and excretions and the mechanics of the sexual act are described in detail along with the specific physical sensations of participants.

Do we find this in the Song of Solomon? More often than not the book of Solomon shys away from any explicit descriptions in favor of simile and metaphor; the example given "I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste" meets even the staunches standards of pure poetry. It's for this reason people can interpret the expressions so liberally and imo give sexual innuendo to what may well in some verses be simple statements of fact ("My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for him" ; was she excited because her lover was at the door or engaging in anal sex? The context indicates the former and not the latter (especially to anyone with an even passing knowledge of the Hebrew language) but that, is an interpretational discussion which, as with all poetry, may well go unresolved in a debating forum like this).

In any case, even giving the most lewed of interpretations to the metaphor, they remain ... metaphors and NOT explicit, and thus no doubt violates the Hugh Hefner rule of three (don't ask*). The whole POINT of pornography is to arouse you libido not your intellect, which is why pornography (while not totally void of similie and metaphor) still choses the shortest route to arousing its reader. In short, there is nothing in SoS that could NOT be used in any highschool poetry class while erotica and pornography would be frowned upon -- even in Las Vegas.

In conclusion while any individual reader is free to find any part of any literature "smutty", "dirty" or even "pornographic" looking at the Song of Solomon objectively from a social and literary point of view, it hardly qualifies.


*I just made those up by the way.

To learn more please go to other posts related to...

SEX, SIN and ...HOMOSEXUALITY

[Purple Knight]

One of the characteristics of pornography (and its younger sister "erotica") is it is usually extremely explicit. It is usually not enough to say "he kissed me" but to express in the crudest of terms what his mouth and tongue was doing. Vague poetic expressions such as "they found expressions of love, sweet as honeyed wine" give way to very graphic descriptions of genitalia, functions and excretions and the mechanics of the sexual act are described in detail along with the specific physical sensations of participants.

I mused for a while on why exactly this is. I came to the conclusion that it is because expectations change by the mean. In other words, if everything in a society is sexual, only the most sexual things will excite arousal. In contrast, in a puritan society, a woman may need only a flash of her elbow or leg to excite, and she may well be flashing her leg for that purpose. What is mundane to one culture may be inflammatory and graphic to another.

It's because of the extremely mucky issue of how a piece of work was intended that this matters. We can either default for reasonable in that society and risk misinterpretation because we don't live in any society but our own, or we can admit that how a work was intended can't be known without asking the creator.

I'm willing to say I don't know for ancient cultures. But I'm not willing to have "art" museums on public dime that are filled with people jamming their ham and have the "curators" simply say, "Well, that's not how we or the artists intend these works! Those nasty patrons just choose to do that."

My point is, at some point you have to trust your own incredulity that something wasn't "intended" that way. But... this isn't going to be something you can really put into an argument. Despite that, I still don't want that museum. I feel I have every right to object to it at least getting public funding. It would really be better if the definition of pornography didn't rest on a totally non-provable idea being or failing to be in the mind of the artist.

Sorry for bumping this old topic. Felt it was poignant.