when was the book song of songs written
Song of Songs The Song offers no clue to its author or to the date, place, or circumstances of its composition.[12] The superscription states that it is "Solomon's", but even if this is meant to identify the author, it cannot be read as strictly as a similar modern statement.[13] The most reliable evidence for its date is its language: Aramaic gradually replaced Hebrew after the end of the Babylonian exile in the late 6th century BCE, and the evidence of vocabulary, morphology, idiom and syntax clearly points to a late date, centuries after King Solomon to whom it is traditionally attributed.[14] It has parallels with Mesopotamian and Egyptian love poetry from the first half of the 1st millennium, and with the pastoral idylls of Theocritus, a Greek poet who wrote in the first half of the 3rd century;[15][16][17] as a result of these conflicting signs, speculation ranges from the 10th to the 2nd centuries BCE,[12] with the language supporting a date around the 3rd century.[18]