AILCC: Chapter 7E
Reminder: We are reviewing John Walton's Ancient Israelite Literature in Its Cultural Context.
Frankly, I'm not impressed with how Walton handles the Song of Solomon. The most glaring omission is noting how it's in the form of a dramatic script, what would pass for a musical stage play during Solomon's reign. Nothing else in the ANE comes close to this.
Ignoring that, Walton points out that the closest Mesopotamian parallel is the cult ritual celebrating the marriage of the deities Tammuz (or Dumuzi) and his sister Ishtar (or Inanna). This symbolic ritual is typically performed by the reigning king and a priestess, and is essentially a fertility rite in the broadest sense according to the mythology regarding those two figures. Yes, it includes having actual sex in front of the worshipers.
On the other end is the various Egyptian love songs. Here, the differences against the Song of Solomon narrows a bit, because there is no ritual at all in the biblical book, nor even a mention of God, which is true of the Egyptian stuff. Most scholars conclude that the Song of Solomon really doesn't fit well in with the rest of the Bible. It's just a cultural expression of what lovers say to each other, as are the Egyptian samples, more or less. In both cultures, the lover describes the beloved in various terms. Some scholars suggest that Solomon borrowed heavily the concept, but not so much the specific expressions. Walton offers a good bit of detail, but it's really not that informative because he misses the most important issue that I cited above.
The chapter ends with a look at an alleged case of borrowing within the area of Wisdom Literature. Walton's emphasis here is Proverbs 22:17-24:22 against the Instruction of Amenemope. He includes parallel columns of text from both. I can tell you that most standard commentaries written for a lay audience will tell you that Solomon borrowed heavily from the Egyptian document. That whole section is not even the same tone, and may well be a Hebrew paraphrase of the Egyptian material. Solomon openly admits to being a collector and editor, not necessarily the source of these proverbs.
Under the heading of structure/form, Walton gets lost in talking about how the Egyptian version has thirty chapters, while the Hebrew uses a very obscure word that could mean "thirty" but it's disputed. Further, it seems the Hebrew version is somewhat condensed, and it's hard to make it fit the Egyptian thirty sections.
Under the heading of content, Walton notes a couple of things. First, the Egyptian document is only one example with that sort of content. Solomon could easily have been collating multiple sources, because many of the pagan parallel documents sound rather similar with various parts of the Proverbs. Further, Proverbs and Amenemope both have sections very dissimilar to each other. The single greatest difference is, of course, Solomon's focus on Jehovah and the unique Hebrew theology, versus a rather generic Egyptian devotion to multiple deities.
In terms of vocabulary/imagery, Walton says little more than that what the two share is not conclusive enough to argue borrowing either way. The chapter ends with a quote that suggests a likely scenario: Solomon's court included an Egyptian scribe who remembered a substantial portion of Amenemope because it was part of the scribal training canon in Egypt.