In Dr. W. Bacher's Agada der Tannaiten, ii, pp. 168-170, will be found important notes on some of these passages.
I have freely translated the story of Solomon's daughter from Buber's Tanchuma, Introduction, p. 136. It is clearly pieced together from several stories, too familiar to call for the citation of parallels. With one of the incidents may be compared the device of Sindbad in his second voyage. He binds himself to one of the feet of a rukh, i.e. condor, or bearded vulture. In another adventure he attaches himself to the carcass of a slaughtered animal, and is borne aloft by a vulture. A similar incident may be noted in Pseudo-Ben Sira (Steinschneider, p. 5).
Compare also Gubernatis, Zool. Myth, ii, 94. The fabulous anka was banished as punishment for carrying off a bride.
For the prayers based on belief in the Divine appointment of marriages, see
"Jewish Life in the Middle Ages," ch. x.
One of the many sixteenth century Tobit dramas is Tobie, Comedie De Catherin Le Doux: En laquelle on void comme les marriages sont faicts au ciel, & qu'il n'y a rien qui eschappe la providence de Dieu (Cassel, 1604).
HEBREW LOVE SONGS
From personal observation, Dr. G.H. Dalman collected a large number of modern Syrian songs in his Palästinischer Diwan (Leipzig, 1901). The songs were taken down, and the melodies noted, in widely separated districts. Judea, the Hauran, Lebanon, are all represented. Dr. Dalman prints the Arabic text in "Latin" transliteration, and appends German renderings. Wetzstein's earlier record of similar folk-songs appears in Delitzsch's Commentary on Canticles—Hohelied und Koheleth,—1875 and also in the Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, v, p. 287. Previous commentators had sometimes held that the Song of Songs was a mere collection of detached and independent fragments, but on the basis of Wetzstein's discoveries, Professor Budde elaborated his theory, that the Song is a Syrian wedding-minstrel's repertory.
This theory will be found developed in Budde's Commentary on Canticles (1898); it is a volume in Marti's Kurzer Hand-Commentar zum Alten Testament. An elaborate and destructive criticism of the repertory theory may be read in Appendix ii of Mr. Andrew Harper's "Song of Solomon" (1902): the book forms a volume in the series of the Cambridge Bible for Schools. Harper's is a very fine work, and not the least of its merits is its exposition of the difficulties which confront the attempt to deny unity of plot and plan to the Biblical song. Harper also expresses a sound view as to the connection between love-poetry and mysticism. "Sensuality and mysticism are twin moods of the mind." The allegorical significance of the Song of Songs goes back to the Targum, an English version of which has been published by Professor H. Gollancz in his "Translations from Hebrew and Aramaic" (1908).
Professor J.P. Mahaffy's view on the Idylls of Theocritus may be read in his "History of Greek Literature," ii, p. 170, and in several pages of his "Greek Life and Thought" (see Index, s.v.).
The passage in which Graetz affirms the borrowing of the pastoral scheme by the author of Canticles from Theocritus, is translated from p. 69 of Graetz's Schir ha-Schirim, oder das salomonische Hohelied (Vienna, 1871). Though the present writer differs entirely from the opinion of Graetz on this point, he has no hesitation in describing Graetz's Commentary as a masterpiece of brilliant originality.