of the "inspired" book. Its inspiration is purely sensual and erotic. "In it, according to most critics," says Robertson Smith, "the pure love of the Shulamite for her betrothed is depicted as victorious over the seductions of Solomon and his harem." It is a beautiful love-song, a kind of lyric-drama, without any consciousness of allegory on the writer's part, and without any known basis of fact. The gravity with which we monks used to recite it in our choir, applying the most sensual and (from the modern point of view) indecent passages to the mother of Christ and to his spouse, the Church, is a curious instance of the perversity of superstition. It is post-exilic in origin (Cheyne), many centuries more recent than Solomon. The so-called Proverbs of Solomon are also "not at all Solomonic, though they may contain some of his sayings" (Robertson Smith), and Cheyne speaks of the "worthless tradition of Solomonic authorship." He says that "in final arrangement they are almost certainly post-exilic," and some parts of the book certainly. He adds that the other proverbial books of the Old Testament are certainly later than 538. Ecclesiastes is a work of the Greek period. Kuenen puts it about 200 B.C., about forty years before the Maccabean rising, and he is generally followed.
With regard to the psalms, the principal concern of the higher critics has been to test the accuracy of their titular inscriptions, and discover their true date and authorship. As is found to be the case with nearly all the books of the Old Testament, the titles and the traditions of authorship are entirely wrong. Instead of David being the leading composer of the psalms, there is not a single one that can be confidently attributed to him. All admit that the vast majority of the so-called Davidic psalms are certainly not by David; they "belong to different periods of Israelitish history" (Driver), and Canon Cheyne is inclined to agree with the "advanced" critics that the whole psalter is post-exilic, and at the most may contain a few Davidic elements. Robertson Smith, in his eagerness to enable theologians to retain traditional terminology, can only say that "the so-called psalms of David may come from a collection in which there were psalms of David." The 110th psalm, which Christ expressly attributes to David (Mark xii. 37; Luke xx. 42 and 44), was only written nearly one thousand
