Monday, November 16, 2009

Please explain to me the expression Rose of Sharon as it is used in Christianity to name Jesus.?

The Rose of Sharon is in the Song of Songs AKA the Song of Solomon. Raging debate about its purpose in the Biblical cannon went on in early days of the church and there are some who believe the book serves no purpose today. When finally accepted as a part of scripture, first by early Jews, the Jews said it describes God's relationship with the chosen people, the Jews themselves. Then, with the rise of Christianity and as they developed their own sense of the Scriptures and debated Song of Solomon's value in the Biblical cannon, they decided that the Song of Solomon was a metaphor for God's love for the church.





Why try to sanitize it? Because the church wanted to soften its sexual overtones. The book is attributed to Solomon who had many wives, including Sheba, for whom the book is supposed to be written. How does the church then promote monogamy and condemn promiscuity and frankly, control the insitution of marriage when the Bible has such romantic and erotic poetry in it?





To attribute the name of Christ with the rose of sharon, the lily of the valley, which are supposedly the metaphors for flowers of beauty and symbols themselves of purity is to cement the notion of purity of Christ. But if you read further, the writer says " I am the Rose of Sharon, the lily of the valleys, the lily among the thorns, so is my love for the daughters" If this is about Christ and his relationship with the church, then he is depicted very differently from the way we as Christians have always thought of him. But if we see it for what it is, a beautiful love letter showing that sex is a blessing for the ones who have it in Love and Passion and commit the energies of their love to the glory of God, how blessed are we indeed when we embrace our lover and know that this act, this consumation of the flesh is as much an act of faith as prayer or holy communion......ah, but I wax poetic.....I haven't kissed my lover today.......





Aslinn Dhan

Please explain to me the expression Rose of Sharon as it is used in Christianity to name Jesus.?
Rose of Sharon


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia





The Rose of Sharon is a flower of uncertain identity mentioned in English language translations of the Bible. The word in question is the Hebrew חבצלת ḥăḇaṣṣeleṯ, which has been uncertainly linked to the words בצל beṣel, meaning 'bulb', and חמץ ḥāmaṣ, which is understood as meaning either 'pungent' or 'splendid' (The Analytical Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon). The name first appears in 1611, when it was used in the King James Version of the Bible. According to an annotation at Song of Solomon 2.1 by the translation committee of the New Revised Standard Version, this is a mistranslation of the Hebrew word for "crocus". Different scholars have suggested that the biblical "Rose of Sharon" is one of the following plants:


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