Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: The Song of Solomon, the maybe most controversial book of scripture in our canon. Is it a beautiful allegory for God's love of Israel or the church? Or is it erotic Israelite love poetry? I guess that's what we're talking about today. Song of Solomon is in our canon, and so it is something that Latter Day Saints, we have to grapple with. But on the one hand, it's in our scriptures, it's in our canon, but on the other, Joseph Smith has talked about how it's like, maybe not inspired, and there's some suggestive and sensual things in it. So I know, don't. How do we make sense of this today? That's what we're going to be talking about. We're actually drawing from a chapter in this book. From Wilderness to Monarchy. The Old Testament through the lens of the Restoration. This is a series done by the rsc. It's really good where they go through all the way from Genesis, and they're eventually going to do the whole Old Testament with essays from BYU professors and scholars covering all sorts of topics. And one of them is by Dana pike, and it's talking about the Song of Solomon and, like, how Latter Day Saints have treated this book of scripture in the past. And what do we make of it? So, Stephen, what do we make of the Song of Solomon?
[00:01:02] Speaker B: Is this the first episode that we're going to have to put a parental advisory label like on those old CDs from the 90s? You know, Tipper Gore is going to get all mad at us here.
[00:01:11] Speaker C: I mean, I don't know, we've talked about martyrdom, we've talked about polygamy. We maybe should be putting a parental advisory on everything. Maybe.
[00:01:19] Speaker A: But we will do our best to keep this pg. Even though, like, the Book of Scripture
[00:01:23] Speaker B: itself gets pretty sexually, it gets pretty spicy. Yes. This is a family friendly podcast, ladies and gentlemen, so you can watch this with your children. But we will be discussing adult themes in this episode, because what is the Song of Solomon? It is a book of love poetry in a nutshell. It is ancient Israelite erotic love poetry. And we can talk about how Jews and Christians historically have tried to sort of deal with the Song of Solomon, how they interpret it, how it's used. At the end of the day, it's ancient love poetry in the Bible, and people have lots of questions about why it's in the Bible and what it's doing.
[00:01:55] Speaker A: All right, so what is the Song of Solomon?
[00:01:58] Speaker B: Okay, so it gets its name from the first line of the book, which In Hebrew is Shir hasherim asher lishlomo, the Song of Songs. The Shir Hashirim. That's a nice Hebrew way of saying like the best, awesomest song, right? Think of like Kedosh Kedoshim, the holy of holies, right?
[00:02:14] Speaker A: The King of Kings, Lord of Lords.
[00:02:16] Speaker C: Songiest song.
[00:02:17] Speaker B: The most songiest songs. Exactly. And it is attributed to Shlomo, Solomon. Right. That lamed preposition le is doing a lot of heavy lifting there because it could be for Solomon of Solomon. Concerning Solomon, regarding Solomon.
[00:02:32] Speaker A: So in verse one of chapter one, it just says the Song of Songs, which is Solomon's. That's the KJV song.
[00:02:37] Speaker B: That's the kjv. And so historically, is it written by him?
[00:02:40] Speaker A: Is it for him?
[00:02:40] Speaker B: That's what people. And historically, traditionally it is attributed as being written by Solomon. Of course, Solomon we know, was a poet and a musician. That's what it says in the Book of Kings, that he was, you know, doing nice poetry.
Also, famously, Solomon had a very large harem in the palace, right?
What, 700 wives and 300 concubines or something like that, right?
[00:03:02] Speaker C: So yeah, you put two and two together, it certainly makes sense that you would think, oh yeah, he might write,
[00:03:07] Speaker B: attribute it to Solomon. I am sorry to say for all of you Song of Solomon fans out there, that almost certainly it was not written by Solomon. Actually, biblical scholars for a long time have recognized that the language from the Song of Solomon is way too late for Solomon's time. They're like Persian loan words.
[00:03:25] Speaker C: It, Right?
[00:03:25] Speaker B: That only makes sense in like a exilic Persian context, things like that. It is possible that some of the imagery, even some of the passages perhaps go back to the reign of Solomon. There are some very good biblical scholars that think that maybe individual units of the Song, Song of Songs or Song of Solomon might go back to the Solomonic court.
That's plausible, right? But like to think that this is all just Solomon's. Probably not from our best evidence. Probably it was compiled sometime in the exile or in the Persian period. That's kind of the predominant view today.
So take that for whatever it's worth. But traditionally it's attributed to Solomon. Now people want to know how does this end up in the Bible? Right? Like that's the other kind of million dollar question. And truthfully, we don't really know. And Dana pike in his article goes over kind of the canonization history, so we know it shows up in the Septuagint. That's the Greek translation of the Old Testament.
We have fragmentary copies among the Dead Sea Scrolls. So the guys at Qumran like the Song of Solomon. So they are copying it and using it in their community.
Funny enough, it is not quoted at all in the New Testament. Like, it's one of the few, along with Judges, Esther and Ecclesiastes. It's one of the few books of the Old Testament that is not quoted in the New Testament by Jesus or any of the apostles or any of the New Testament writers. I guess Paul doesn't like Song of Solomon. He doesn't really use it. Maybe, you know, there is the language of, like, you know, the church being the bride of Christ. So maybe some people say maybe that's kind of being adapted from the Song of Solomon, but there's no explicit quotation.
[00:04:59] Speaker C: And that's something that could more. I feel like does more explicitly and logically come from, like, say, Hosea or.
I think. Does Isaiah have a bridegroom?
[00:05:09] Speaker B: I think so, yeah.
[00:05:10] Speaker C: That's a prophetic metaphor that shows up in other books between the relationship between the Lord and Israel that I feel like would be a more direct analog to, like, Christ is the bridegroom and the church is the bride that you find in the New Testament.
[00:05:24] Speaker A: What I find so just distinct about the Song of Solomon is unlike some of the historical books or the narrative books, there's no. And it came to pass. This character is with this character. And then this thing happened. It just, like, goes straight into verse two.
Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for thy love is better than wine. Like, it just goes straight into clearly, like, very romantic, if not sensual themes. And it just continues from there, obviously.
And so then you're left to wonder, like, oh, who's him? Who's the beloved?
Who are the characters here? What's going on? And like the Psalms, you get the sense that they're written by David, but they're all clearly, like, religious in nature. They're very overtly. He uses a lot of metaphor and simile, but David is also, like, clearly praising the Lord. And then in Proverbs, they're like these little pithy wisdom sayings. And so you can understand why that's different. But like, Song of Solomon just feels so different to me just because it goes right into a poetry of what I presume is a man and a woman who are in love with each other. The point of view shifts. Like, sometimes it's the man talking, sometimes it's the woman talking.
[00:06:27] Speaker B: And it can be confusing in the King James Bible. So if you. If you really want to read the Song of Solomon? I recommend a modern English translation like the nrsv. Some Bibles will even put the man, the woman, right? Like it'll tell you who's speaking. It's really clear in Hebrew, because Hebrew is a gendered language, right? In terms of, you know, how its verbs are conjugated and pronouns and, you know, things like that. So like, you can, you can very clearly see in the Hebrew who's speaking when.
It can be a little confusing in the King James English, right? But yes, the speakers are anonymous, the lovers are anonymous. Here's another monkey wrench to throw into the Song of Solomon to our consideration. Besides the fact that God is never mentioned in the Song of Solomon, there's nothing religious really in the Song of Solomon. No morality, no piety, no religious rights, no religious rights, nothing like that.
[00:07:13] Speaker A: Interpretive commentary for how it could connect to religion.
[00:07:16] Speaker B: Nothing like that. It's just love poetry.
Are the lovers, are the man and woman, are they married?
That's something that people wonder because there are instances where the man refers to women as like my bride, but he also refers to him as my sister.
So, like, how literal are you going to take this? Right, But I guess we got some like, you know, Game of Thrones, Jaime, Cersei, Lannister stuff going on here. Actually, that's really common in ancient, especially Egyptian love poetry. This is all to say we don't know who the lovers are, they're anonymous. Maybe that's on purpose, so that the individual reading it and even singing it. Right. We do have evidence that in antiquity it was being used in secular contexts. So Rabbi Akiva, the great first century Jewish rabbi who was one of the leading figures of the Mishnah, right. This compilation of the oral law of sort of normative Judaism. We have accounts that Rabbi Akiva is getting upset that people are like singing it at like banquet halls and things like that. Right. So there's clearly a, a non religious sort of secular use. And Rabbi Akiva seems to be on who pushes to say, no, this should be scripture, right?
[00:08:19] Speaker A: It's holy.
[00:08:20] Speaker B: It's holy. Yeah, we should. So anyways, the other thing I do want to mention, by the way, I would be remiss if I did not mention biblical scholars have noted some very close affinities with Egyptian love poetry. I already mentioned the calling, the person, my sister, my brother.
That's a dead ringer of a parallel with Egyptian love poetry. But there's lots of other parallels as well. Some of the imagery, some of the structure so this is all to say, approaching it from a critical perspective, what is this thing? It's ancient love poetry, right? It has affinities with Egyptian, some Canaanite, Mesopotamia, but mostly Egyptian love poetry. It's anonymous. There's nothing overtly religious about it. It's being used in antiquity, in secular contexts. Some even speculate. Maybe it's being sung at weddings, for example. Right. We don't know. But later it becomes scripturized, it becomes canonized. We even don't know exactly how it becomes canonized. That's still a big question for us. But around by the first second century, that's when we get Rabbi Akiba and others who are like, no, guys, this is. He famously says all scripture is holy, but the Song of Songs is the holy of holies. Right. Like, he's a really big fan of it as a scriptural thing. Maybe that gets us into how Jews and Christians have used this, because it's
[00:09:31] Speaker A: kind of funny, because today a lot of Christians will say, well, this is clearly an allegory for God's love for the believer, the church, Israel. How do we get to that point?
[00:09:40] Speaker B: We get to that point because of the rabbinic interpretation of the song beginning shortly around or after the time of Jesus, when we have the rabbi saying, this was a sort of a poem or a song between God and Israel.
So the metaphor of, you know, Israel being God's spouse, being the bride, like, that's, again, that's in Hosea, that's in other parts of the Hebrew Bible. So it makes sense how you can kind of get to this idea that, well, it's just an extended allegory for God's love for Israel, his covenant people.
I suppose that's a fine enough interpretation, depending on how comfortable you are with the very sensual imagery going on in the song. Whether that would be appropriate metaphor or not, that's for individuals to decide. But that's where they get there on the Jewish side of things. And you have some elaborate Jewish traditions, how, you know this was being sung at Mount Sinai or at the Temple or whatever. Right. They're claiming there's some liturgical use. There is liturgical use for the song today in modern Judaism. It's used in some Jewish festival contexts, but so that's on the Jewish side. On the Christian side, of course, naturally, it ends up in the Christian canon as well, along with the other books of the Old Testament. And as you would expect, the metaphor, the allegorical reading is, oh, well, it's an allegory about God's love for the church. And so in this case, the male lover is God, the female lover is the church, and.
And you're off to the races with the Christian allegorical reading.
I believe there are some Catholic readers that see the female lover or female voice as Mary, the Virgin Mary, for example. So you can spend all day, you want allegorizing it.
[00:11:17] Speaker C: I feel like there's some jokes about virginity somewhere in there.
[00:11:20] Speaker B: Yeah. Let me just read real quick this one quote from pike just to kind of summarize what we've been talking about here.
He says, quote, currently, the vast majority of Bible scholars agree that. That the song did not originate as inspired scripture. As indicated above, the opening line of this book concisely indicates its genre, the Song of Songs, which is Solomon's. And since this prophetic book is about love, the song is best understood and is now commonly accepted as an example of Israelite love poetry. This conclusion is supported by at least three points. One, the song is devoid of the name of God. Two, it demonstrates no obvious religious intent, and. And three, it shares several features with Egyptian love poetry. Egyptian texts from the New Kingdom period currently provide the closest non Israelite parallels to this love poetry. These factors have led some scholars attempting to distance the song from the traditional view of divine allegory to refer to the song as secular poetry. So I'm all fine. If you're a believing Jew or Christian and you want to allegorize the Song of Solomon, that's totally fine. That's what we do with this kind of scripture.
[00:12:25] Speaker A: You're likening it on yourself.
[00:12:26] Speaker B: You liken it, that's totally fine. But just realize that is not the original intent.
Any allegorical reading is as good as any other because at that point, it's a secondary interpretation.
[00:12:35] Speaker C: There is another way that some Christian scholars have tried to deal with it, like Tremper Longman iii, who have talked about how the pre. Like, they've accepted that this is, you know, love poetry. That's what it is, that's its purpose, that's its genre. And its role in being in the Bible is that God cares about our loving and intimate relationships. And he cares, you know, that the body is divine, that there is something sacred and holy in our relationships like that, in the relationship between husband and wife and things like that.
[00:13:07] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:13:07] Speaker A: So I will say, like, in the defense of kind of that allegorical interpretation, I do like the Book of Hosea is one of my favorite books of scripture because it deals with that allegory. And I find the allegory of, like, God in Israel, Christ and the church a beautiful one. I find it, like, really touching because, like, intimate relationships between a husband and a spouse are. We see them as sacred, they see them as somewhat divine, and they're placed playing with powers of godliness. And so when in Hosea, when God uses it to demonstrate how hurtful and betrayed he feels, when Israel is unfaithful, like, I think it's a very poignant symbol. I love it. And so I can see why it's tempting to kind of try to impute that onto the Song of Solomon. But then, like, I think that metaphor works really well until you actually read the Song of Solomon.
[00:13:50] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:13:51] Speaker A: And then, like you said, there's no mention of God. There's nothing to cue you into this being to help you, like, create that interpretation. Instead, it just goes right into very romantic. It gets pretty erotic, even.
[00:14:04] Speaker B: Erotic.
[00:14:05] Speaker A: Even at points when you look, I kind of peel back the layers of KJV euphemisms.
[00:14:10] Speaker B: Yeah. If you want to get a full sense for the language, the erotic language of the Song of Solomon, bypass the kjv, which is at this point even old and dusty English, go for a modern English translation like the NRSV or the English Standard Bible or something like that. Right. The new international version.
And it's kind of hard to miss. And again, this is a family friendly podcast, so we will just say go read like chapter five, starting on verses three, four through five in a modern English translation with the understanding that this is erotic love poetry, basically. And it's hard to miss the double entendre, the sensual imagery. Right.
It's all present there. So the allegorical readings can only kind of take you so far, I think, before you're confronted with what it really is. I do agree, actually, to an extent with what Tremper, Longman, the Third and others have said. I think we as Latter Day Saints, we totally would vibe with that. Right. We see sexuality within the bonds of marriage as sacred and holy. I don't think we certainly have an embodied sense of relationships and how important that is. So I don't think we'd have any problem with that reading as a secondary interpretation if we want to go down that route.
[00:15:14] Speaker C: Right, sure.
[00:15:14] Speaker A: But it's certainly not the original intent of the author.
And maybe it's just us being prudish, but I have a hard time seeing how explicit some of the imagery is and feeling like this is a metaphor for God's love for Israel, especially because every other point where that metaphor is employed in the Scriptures, it's usually in the of, like, unfaithfulness, of, like, God feeling betrayed by Israel and, like, come back unto me and I'm going to love you as a spouse. And it never gets sexually explicit. So then to see like this 180 about where it's just like very explicit infatuation with someone's body just feels like it doesn't make sense to me as a metaphor when there's nothing else in the text that would cue you into that.
[00:15:52] Speaker C: What have Latter Day Saints said and done with the Song of Solomon?
[00:15:57] Speaker B: Well, I don't know about you, Neil, but when I was on my mission, I was told to staple shut the Song of Solomon in my scripture scriptures or to glue the pages shut. I don't know. Did you hear that?
That's a good bit of little Mormon folklore. Seminary or mission?
Well, I mean, not me directly, but that was kind of the. The rumor flag. That was. The folklore on the mission was like, oh, you know, oh, we were told that. Never read it. Like, you should staple it or glue it shut or, you know, whatever seminary I hear, that's what you sometimes hear or whatever.
[00:16:21] Speaker C: As. As best as I can recall, I don't remember ever hearing, or I never did read it on my mission or before that.
[00:16:28] Speaker B: You're missing out, man.
[00:16:30] Speaker A: But I.
[00:16:31] Speaker C: But I don't remember hearing anything like that.
As best as I can recall, at some point in seminary, I had heard that Joseph Smith said the Song of Solomon was not inspired.
[00:16:39] Speaker B: So that's true. He does say that. So famously in the Joseph Smith translation manuscript, Joseph is going along in the different biblical books and he comes to the Song of Solomon and he leaves this notation, the Songs of Solomon are not inspired writings. And he just skips over the whole thing sidebar. That's a good indication that the JST is not strictly a translation in the conventional sense, because he's not giving a better rendering of what the words mean in Hebrew.
[00:17:06] Speaker A: He's giving some kind of commentary.
[00:17:07] Speaker B: He's giving a prophetic kind of commentary or expansion on it, and he just bypasses it.
[00:17:11] Speaker C: Or even just. Yeah, pronouncement of the inspired nature.
[00:17:14] Speaker B: Nature of it. Yeah. So.
[00:17:16] Speaker C: And how does he. You know, it almost seems like he gets no inspiration on what to do with it. And so he's, oh, this isn't inspired.
[00:17:22] Speaker B: So he just bypasses it. So anyways, that's a set. We'll do an episode on the JST sometime. That's a good episode. But yes, the Songs of Solomon are not inspired writings. Because of that. Historically, Latter Day Saints have Mostly just bypassed the Song of Solomon.
Famously or infamously, I suppose. Elder Bruce or McConkie once called the Song of Solomon Biblical trash is what he called it, which is maybe a bit harsh.
I'm gonna go out on a limb here. I actually kind of like the Song of Solomon. I think it's very beautiful as love poetry.
This may be betraying what a giant nerd I am, but I like to read it on Valentine's Day with my wife. I think it's all really nice.
[00:17:57] Speaker A: Well, I think it is fun, Fascinating. Absolutely. From, like, a historical standpoint to. To understand that, like, humans weren't that different from us, you know, thousands of years ago. Like, they had these same romantic notions. Even though sometimes we have a notion that, like, romance didn't start until the Victorian period, sometimes, you know, that, like,
[00:18:13] Speaker B: it didn't start until Jane Austen and Mr. Bennett. Yeah.
[00:18:16] Speaker A: But that people had, like, real human emotions even back then to kind of, like, read this through an ancient Israelite lens, like, what they viewed of romance, love things. Like, it's fascinating. It's great scripture.
[00:18:26] Speaker B: Well, okay, so. So Elder McConkey is not a fan. However, Dana just point out that Elder McConkie is not the only Latter Day Saint leader to comment on this.
So he cites Spencer W. Kimball, who cited it positively. He cites in his article other Latter Day Saints who've been like, oh, we really like this. This is beautiful. And they use it in different contexts. Here's another giant monkey wrench to throw in this conversation. So Joseph Smith says the Songs of Solomon are not inspired writings. And yet, despite that, the Song of Solomon goes on to be quoted not once, not twice, but thrice in the Doctrine and Covenants.
It's in section 5, verse 14, section 105, verse 31, and section 109, verse 73, which, for those of you paying attention at home, section 109 is the Kirtland Temple dedication prayer. So Joseph Smith is quoting it in the Kirtland Temple, and he's quoting Psalm, chapter 6, verse 10.
Fair as the moon, clear as the sun, as terrible as an army with banners. And he uses it in the context of referring to the church. Right. The church gaining prominence and coming out of obscurity. So there's another allegoricalized kind of reading of it.
[00:19:29] Speaker C: So, yeah, and this was actually something. I had not noticed this before reading the Dana pike paper. But, yeah, he kind of leans into adopting that language and making that allegorical metaphor to the church. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that's, like, revealed like, that's revelation that that's the intent of the Song of Solomon itself. It's really more just an adaptation and likening of the language for the purposes of like the restoration and describing that relationship there. Right. But it was interesting. I had not noticed that those quotes were in the Doctrine and Covenants. One thing that I did want to mention that I don't think comes up in Pike's article, but Jeffrey R. Holland would actually use the title Rose of Sharon as a Christological title. Right. And that comes from the Song of Solomon. And that's something I noticed. It was actually on my mission that I listened to a talk and I was like, rose of Sharon. When I heard Elder Holland mentioned that, I was like, what is that? And then I discovered, oh, it's in the Song of Solomon.
[00:20:26] Speaker B: Yeah. So we have other examples of that. I do want to say, for the record, and this is something that one of my BYU professors once said.
I think there is a very delightful irony in the fact that the dude that had 30 wives did not like the Song of Solomon. Right. So what do we do with it today? Maybe that's the question.
In 2022, the come follow me schedule, the manual omitted the Song of Solomon. But it, it never says like, don't ever read it. It just says like, because it says, oh, this is. Can be adapted for personal, family use or whatever.
[00:20:56] Speaker A: Right.
[00:20:56] Speaker B: Like, as you're guided by Revelation, you can do your own study plan. So as far as I'm aware, Elder McConkie's very thundering negative assessment notwithstanding, the church has never been like, don't ever read the Song of Solomon. It's bad. It's just been like, oh, we don't consider it inspired.
Dana pike makes the point. And maybe we want to talk about this.
So Joseph Smith says it's not inspired writings.
What does that mean exactly? Because it's still in our Bible. Like the lds, it is canon. So can we have non inspired things in an inspired canon? Pike's answer is basically, he thinks what Joseph is saying is it is not authoritative as Scripture. Right. Meaning it's not inspired for the purpose of giving doctrinal instruction and authority for what we believe. But it's still there.
It's still in our Bibles today. We use the King James.
Joseph still used it in his Bible. Right. Actually, pike also points out, he quotes it again in 1842 in the Nauvoo Relief Society. The thing about little foxes spoiled of mine. So Joseph is still using the Song of Solomon in different contexts. So I Don't know. What do you guys think about that? What do we do when we have non inspired writings in our inspired canon? What does that say about our canon and what does that mean for us?
[00:22:08] Speaker A: It's a great question. I don't know if I entirely know the answer. I remember, like, in seminary, there was the challenge every year that read the entire book, even if those scripture blocks weren't assigned for that week. And so I remember as a teenager reading the entire Old Testament, so I read the Song of Solomon, remember being a little bit scandalized and like, what? This is so weird.
Why is this in here? And like, having those very real questions, like, why is this in our scriptures?
But, like, I read it, my parents never told me not to. And we had good discussions about, like, what it is, why it's there. Joseph Smith said it was, like, not necessarily inspired. And so I think things can be very instructive and, like, helpful and useful without being doctrinal, without being like, the inerrant voice of God to us. And there could still be interesting things. I mean, there are various stories in the Old Testament that are just kind of, like, weird, that aren't necessarily telling a moral message. They're not necessarily, like, moving the narrative along. They're just kind of preserving some kind of oral tradition. And they're just there and they're just a little odd. And you're like, oh, okay. But it's still in our canon and we still respect and revere them, even if it's not like, changing our lives metaphorically and spiritually.
[00:23:15] Speaker B: Well, and what about this to throw another factor into here? Is the Song of Solomon any less inspired than, like, Leviticus? You know what I mean? Like, that's all Law of Moses stuff. We don't do that anymore. Like, and we don't, you know, I eat bacon all the time, even though we're not supposed to, according to Leviticus. You know what I mean? So, like, it raises that question as well.
[00:23:31] Speaker A: We don't stone adulterers to death.
[00:23:34] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So, like, that's kind of interesting.
[00:23:36] Speaker C: You know, some people think we still should.
No, totally. Just kidding. But I was gonna bring that up is that, you know, like, the Come follow me manual essentially skips over Leviticus as well. Right. And there are.
There are parts of the Bible that large parts of the Hebrew Bible, specifically the Old Testament, that we wouldn't necessarily say are uninspired, but we don't believe they're for our time, basically. But we still keep them in the canon. Right?
They're still part of the scriptural standard.
And so that's maybe still a little bit of a different category. But I think recognizing that, yeah, we don't actually, while we have the standard works, we don't actually consider the whole thing as authoritative for how we're supposed to live our lives today. I think that goes some way in helping us understand and how we like, how do we reconcile having a book like the Song of Solomon in our canon?
I do think we have a little bit more of flexibility in that regard than maybe a lot of other Christian groups do because of their notion of scriptural infallibility or inerrancy. And that's where I think a lot of this kind of allegorizing and stuff comes from, is because they're committed to the idea that it's inerrant, that the Bible is inerrant. The canon as we have it is 100% divinely inspired or God breathed, as you'll even hear him say sometimes based on second Timothy.
And so, and so they've got to come up with some way of reading this as being about God and being divine and being inspired and being infallible even in some way. And so that kind of forces certain interpretations on you or certain interpretive directions to take, whereas we don't have that. And so we're not necessarily bound in that same way.
I don't know if that helps answer what we do do with it, but, but I think it does suggest that we have more flexibility to just be okay with the fact that like, yeah, like it's there, we keep it in the canon, but it's just not something we really use a whole lot.
[00:25:40] Speaker A: Yeah, doesn't mean you're gonna like, you know, put a little post it note on your mirror with an inspirational quote from Solomon.
[00:25:47] Speaker B: No, just kidding.
[00:25:49] Speaker A: If you guys wanna learn more about the Song of Solomon, this is a fantastic resource to get a start, especially for how Latter Day Saints have treated it in the volume From Wilderness to Monarchy by the Religious Study Center. And remember, you can study deep, boldly, and we'll see you next time.
