The author of this Old Testament book is given as King Solomon but it is not narrated as being in the first person. Its existence today is by way of the Greek Septuagint, into which the original Hebrew was translated in the 4^th. Century BC. The original Hebrew script was lost when the Romans destroyed the temple of Jerusalem in the 1^st, Century AD. The Septuagint text however survived in several versions of which the Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Alexandricus and Codex Vaticanicus are the main sources.

To gauge the complexity of the text, the first four stanzas of the original Codex Sinaiticus are given above, together with the associated rubric annotations. The Greek text on the manuscript, both the actual text and the inserted rubrics, is in Greek Uncial and uses the ‘lunate sigma’ throughout. It dates from the fourth century BC therefore does not contain any of the later Alexandrian accents or breathings. The complete Song of Songs Greek text is given below, as parsed, edited and punctuated in the Cambridge University THE OLD TESTAMENT IN GREEK’ by H.B. Swete 1907, and transcribed in lower-case text. The rubrics have been extracted from his footnotes and re-inserted in their proper context. The ‘GRAMMAR OF SEPTUAGINT GREEK’ by F.C. Conybeare & St. George Stock 1905 was consulted where unusual grammatical structures were encountered.