Song of Songs
Title: Song of Songs • Nature Epic & Allegory / by Yehuda Feliks
Date: ⓒ Prof. Yehuda Feliks, 1983
Publisher: Jerusalem (Israel): The Israel Society for Biblical Research
Language: Hebrew and English
References:
Images: (Dust Jacket, title)
Location: Collection Bibelarchiv–Birnbaum (www.bibelpedia.com). Karlsruhe/ Baden. Germany
Contents: Song of Songs, illustrated. With translations of Masora and the Targum. – Foreword • Introduction • The Text and its Interpretation • Selected Bibliography • Sources of Pictures • Index.
Comment: Hardcover quarto, sewn binding, with DJ; 128 pp.; b&w drawings, b&w and colour photos. Hebrew and English texts on facing page, Targum on right page beneath Masorah in double column; copious footnotes w/ cross references; commentary on each page.
Yehuda Feliks, (then) Professor of Biblical & Talmudic Botany, Bar Ilan University, Israel, wrote a three–page Foreword, dated Jerusalem, 15 Av – July 25, 1983 „The day of my daughter Shlomit´s wedding“. An excerpt:
»The present work`s purpose and point of departure is to explain the narrative plot of the Song of Songs and its background in the natural world. I have taken no stand with regard to the work´s allegorical content; however, the attitude of our Sages, according to which the main point of the Song of Songs lies in its allegorical meaning, was always before me as I wrote. (…) For the English edition we have chosen the traditional Aramaic interpretive translation of the Song of Songs, deftly done into English by Dr. Herman Gollancz, to convey the work`s allegorical aspect. Many of Rashi´s finest and most beautiful interpretations were taken from the Aramaic version [=Targum paraphrase (sb)]. Rashi´s basic approach to the text, according to which both the narrative of the Song of Songs and its allegorical meaning are continuous and develop throughout the work, appears to me fundamentally to be sound. (…)
The English text of the Song of Songs printed here is based primarily on the classical English translations. I have, however, introduced certain changes to accord with my own interpretation of the text and my identification of the flora and fauna it describes.«
The topics dealt with and described in the Introduction are: “1) The General Development of the Epic • 2) The Adjuration By the Gazelles and by the Hinds of the Fields‘ • 3.) Other Figures from the Animal World • 4) Figures from the Plant World • 5) The Seasons of the Year and their Scenery.“ All these articles are illustrated with b&w and colour photos.
Biogramm: Yehuda Feliks יהודה פליקס, born in Kosow–Huculski, Ukraine (Yiddish: קאסאוו, German: Kossow, Galizien), on 16. Nisan 5682 / April 14, 1922; he came to Eretz Yisrael in 1938. He held the S. Weinstein chair of Biblical Botany and the Moscowitz chair for Historical Eretz Yisrael Research at Bar–Ilan University. He died in 2005 and is buried in Jerusalem.
