Old Testament Poetic Books, 7

Books

Because of some major domestic adjustments for my wife and I, I have been impeded from blogging. Nevertheless, I want to complete my series of blog posts from my Old Testament Poetic Books’ class. Since I last uploaded a post on my class, we had three more classes on the last two Thursday’s of April and the first Thursday in May, with the initial Thursday finishing Ecclesiastes and the final two the Songs of Solomon and Lamentations.

In covering Ecclesiastes, we treated these issues: title, authorship & date, canonicity, integrity, literary structure, and message. In developing the message of Ecclesiastes, I presented both the negative and positive interpretations of the message. Since I have argued for a positive interpretation in the Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal, this is the view that I developed more fully (to read my article, go here).

With the Song of Solomon, our discussion focused on the book’s title, authorship & date, unity, hermeneutical considerations, and purpose. The major emphasis in the class was on the book’s hermeneutical considerations. In the final analysis, I supported a literal two-part view. This view maintains that the song reflects only two major participants: Solomon and his Shulammite bride. It also includes a chorus of maidens (see Jack S. Deere, ???Songs of Songs,??? in The Bible Knowledge Commentary: Old Testament).

We finally surveyed the book of Lamentations by covering the following areas: the book’s title, authorship & date, literary features, canonicity, and purpose. I gave attention to the examination of Jeremianic authorship (for a concise treatment of this book, see Charles H. Dyer, ???Lamentations,??? in The Bible Knowledge Commentary: Old Testament).

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