But in meaning the refrains have an absolutely opposite sense, and, more than that, they have an absolutely opposite function. In the Idyll the refrain is an accompaniment, in the Song it is an intermezzo. It occurs three times (ii. 7; iii. 5; and viii. 4), and like other repeated refrains in the Song concludes a scene, marks a transition in the situation. In Theocritus refrains are links, in the Song they are breaks in the chain.
Refrains are of the essence of lyric poetry as soon as anything like narrative enters into it. They are found throughout the lyrics of the Old Testament, the Psalms providing several examples. They belong to the essence of the Hebrew strophic system. And so it is with the other structural devices to which Graetz refers: reminiscent narrative, reported dialogues, scenes within the scene—all are common features (with certain differences) of the native Hebraic style, and they supply no justification for the suggestion of borrowing from non-Hebraic models.
There have, on the other side, been many, especially among older critics, who have contended that Theocritus owed his inspiration to Canticles. These have not been disturbed by the consideration, that, if he borrowed at all, he must assuredly have borrowed more than the most generous of them assert that he did. Recently an ingenious advocate of this view has appeared in Professor D.S. Margoliouth, all of whose critical work is rich in originality and surprises. In the first chapter of his "Lines of Defence of the Biblical Revelation," he turns the tables on Graetz with quite entertaining thoroughness. Graetz was certain that no Hebrew poet could have drawn his shepherds from life; Margoliouth is equally sure that no Greek could have done so.
"That this style [bucolic poetry], in which highly artificial performances are ascribed to shepherds and cowherds, should have originated in Greece, would be surprising; for the persons who followed these callings were ordinarily slaves, or humble hirelings, whom the classical writers treat with little respect. But from the time of Theocritus their profession becomes associated with poetic art. The shepherd's clothes are donned by Virgil, Spenser, and Milton. The existence of the Greek translation of the Song of Solomon gives us the explanation of this fact. The Song of Solomon is a pastoral poem, but its pictures are true to nature. The father of the writer [Margoliouth believes in the Solomonic authorship of Canticles], himself both a king and a poet, had kept sheep. The combination of court life with country life, which in Theocritus seems so unnatural, was perfectly natural in pre-Exilic Palestine. Hence the rich descriptions of the country (ii. 12) beside the glowing descriptions of the king's wealth (iii. 10). Theocritus can match both (Idylls vii and xv), but it may be doubted whether he could have found any Greek model for either."
It is disturbing to one's confidence in the value of Biblical criticism—both of the liberal school (Graetz) and the conservative (Margoliouth)—to come across so complete an antithesis. But things are not quite so bad as they look. Each critic is half right—Margoliouth in believing the pastoral pictures of Canticles true to Judean life, Graetz in esteeming the pastoral pictures of the Idylls true to Sicilian life. The English critic supports his theme with some philological arguments. He suggests that the vagaries of the Theocritan dialect are due to the fact that the Idyllist was a foreigner, whose native language was "probably Hebrew or Syriac." Or perhaps Theocritus used the Greek translation of the Song, "unless Theocritus himself was the translator." All of this is a capital jeu d'esprit, but it is scarcely possible that Canticles was translated into Greek so early as Theocritus, and, curiously enough, the Septuagint Greek version of the Song has less linguistic likeness to the phraseology of Theocritus than has the Greek version of the Song by a contemporary of Akiba, the proselyte Aquila. Margoliouth points out a transference by Theocritus of the word for daughter-in-law to the meaning bride (Idyll, xviii. 15). This is a Hebraism, he thinks. But expansions of meaning in words signifying relationship are common to all poets. Far more curious is a transference of this kind that Theocritus does not make. Had he known Canticles, he would surely have seized upon the Hebrew use of sister to mean beloved, a usage which, innocent and tender enough in the Hebrew, would have been highly acceptable to the incestuous patron of Theocritus, who actually married his full sister. Strange to say, the ancient Egyptian love poetry employs the terms brother and sister as regular denotations of a pair of lovers.
This last allusion to an ancient Egyptian similarity to a characteristic usage of Canticles leads to the remark, that Maspero and Spiegelberg have both published hieroglyphic poems of the xixth-xxth Dynasties, in which may be found other parallels to the metaphors and symbolism of the Hebrew Song. As earlier writers exaggerated the likeness of Canticles to Theocritus, so Maspero was at first inclined to exaggerate the affinity of Canticles to the old Egyptian amatory verse. It is not surprising, but it is saddening, to find that Maspero, summarizing his interesting discovery in 1883, used almost the same language as Lessing had used in 1777 with reference to Theocritus. Maspero, it is true, was too sane a critic to assert borrowing on the part of Canticles. But he speaks of the "same manner of speech, the same images, the same comparisons," as Lessing does. Now if A = B, and B = C, then it follows that A = C. But in this case A does not equal C. There is no similarity at all between the Egyptian Songs and Theocritus. It follows that there is no essential likeness between Canticles and either of the other two. In his later books, Maspero has tacitly withdrawn his assertion of close Egyptian similarity, and it would be well if an equally frank withdrawal were made by the advocates of a close Theocritan parallel.
Some of the suggested resemblances between the Hebrew and Greek Songs are perhaps interesting enough to be worth examining in detail. In Idyll i. 24, the goatherd offers this reward to Thyrsis, if he will but sing the song of Daphnis:
I'll give thee first
To milk, ay, thrice, a goat; she suckles twins,
Yet ne'ertheless can fill two milkpails full.
It can hardly be put forward as a remarkable fact that the poet should refer to so common an incident in sheep-breeding as the birth of twins. Yet the twins have been forced into the dispute, though it is hard to conceive anything more unlike than the previous quotation and the one that follows from Canticles (iv. 2):
Thy teeth are like a flock of ewes,
That are newly shorn,
Which are come up from the washing,
Whereof every one hath twins,
And none is bereaved among them.