Song of Songs

Jay Peter

The extraordinary and long-lived appeal of "The Song of Songs" lies in its unmatched lyrical beauty and in its supreme evocation of the moods of sexual love. Perhaps the most famous and popular book of the Bible, it is usually – and yet mistakenly – thought of as a single long narrative poem. Scholars have proposed many theories of the book's structure, but none is more natural than the view that it is a small anthology of quite distinct and varied lyric poems, composed over several centuries of Hebrew history.

Fresh and lyrical, this translation remains the most readable edition available. The poems are set in context by the late Rabbi Dr David Goldstein's revealing introduction, and enhanced with a useful set of notes.

About the Author

Peter Jay (b. 1945) read Classics and English at Oxford. Among his books are a collection of poems "Shifting Frontiers", the Penguin Classic "The Greek Anthology", and several translations including Gerard de Nerval's "Chimeras", Janos Pilinszky's Crater and the novel "Conversations with Sheryl Sutton" (with Eva Major) and selections of poems by Ana Blandiana, Stefan Aug. Doinaa and Nichita Stanescu. He is the managing director of Anvil Press, which he founded in 1968. He lives in Greenwich.

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