"It has been suggested that the Song of Songs was originally the libretto of a small opera, a little Hellenistic drama cast in the manner of the day. Jewish synagogue paintings of the second century appear to be representations of plays that were sometimes performed in front of synagogues, and the Song of Songs has a stage-like air about it."
     - John Romer, Testament]

"The likeliest origin for this book [Song of Songs] is a collection of secular love poetry which later readers tired to present as a religious, not an erotic, text. To support their new reading, they ascribed the book to King Solomon, perhaps during the third century BC."
     - Robin Lane Fox, The Unauthorized Version]

"When Solomon grew old his wives swayed his heart to other gods; and his heart was not wholly with Yahweh his God as his father David's had been. Solomon became a follower of Astarte, the goddess of the Sidonians."
     - 1 Kings 9: 4-5

"In ancient Tyre, Astarte was known by the sobriquets 'Queen of Heaven' and 'Star of the Sea' or 'Stella Maris'...Astarte was worshipped conventionally 'on the high places'; hilltops and mountains - Mount Hermon, for example - abounded with her shrines."
"Indeed, the famous 'Song of Solomon' itself is a hymn to Astarte, and an invocation of her:..."
     - Baigent & Leigh, The Temple and the Lodge

"Come from Lebanon, my promised bride, come from Lebanon, come on your way.
Lower your gaze, from the heights of Amana, from the crests of Senir and Hermon."

"In both the Song of Songs and the Sumerian Sacred Marriage songs...the lover is designated as both king and shepherd, and the beloved is not only his 'bride', but also his 'sister'....From Mesopotamia the theme of the death of Dumuzi and his resurrection spread to Palestine, where we find the women of Jerusalem bewailing Tammuz at the very gates of the Jerusalem Temple."
     - Samuel Noah Kramer, History Begins at Sumer

"Then he brought me to the entrance of the north gate of the house of the Lord; and behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz. Then he said to me, 'Have you seen this, O son of Man? You will see still greater abominations than these!'
"And he brought me into the inner court of the Lord's house, and, behold, at the door of the temple of the Lord, between the porch and the altar, were about five and twenty men, with their back toward the temple of the Lord, and their faces toward the east; and they worshipped the sun toward the east. Then he said to me, 'Have you seen this, O son of man?...Lo, they stretch out the erect phallus before them." (RSV: "put the branch to their nose")
     - Ezekiel 8.14-17

"The bearing of the phallus was a marked feature of the Dionysiac processionals..."
     - John M. Allegro, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross

"...On the sarcophagus of King Ahiram of Byblos (c. 1000 B.C.) women mourners lacerate their bare breasts and perform a ritual dance, represented by their flounced skirts."
     - John Gray, Near Eastern Mythology

Hyperlinks

·Egyptian Scriptural Correspondences
·Mysteries of the Templars