<P> The people praise the beauty of the woman . The images are the same as those used elsewhere in the poem, but with an unusually dense use of place - names, e.g., pools of Hebron, gate of Bath - rabbim, tower of Damascus, etc . The man states his intention to enjoy the fruits of the woman's garden . The woman invites him to a tryst in the fields . She once more warns the daughters of Jerusalem against waking love until it is ready . </P> <P> The woman compares love to death and sheol: love is as relentless and jealous as these two, and cannot be quenched by any force . She summons her lover, using the language used before: he should come "like a gazelle or a young stag upon the mountain of spices". </P> <P> The Song offers no clue to its author or to the date, place, or circumstances of its composition . 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 . 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 . 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; as a result of these conflicting signs, speculation ranges from the 10th to the 2nd centuries BCE, with the language supporting a date around the 3rd century . </P> <P> Debate continues on the unity or disunity of the Song . Those who see it as an anthology or collection point to the abrupt shifts of scene, speaker, subject matter and mood, and the lack of obvious structure or narrative . Those who hold it to be a single poem point out that it has no internal signs of composite origins, and view the repetitions and similarities among its parts as evidence of unity . Some claim to find a conscious artistic design underlying it, but there is no agreement among them on what this might be . The question therefore remains unresolved . </P>

When was the book song of songs written