 Another important interpretive principle of Herder’s, closely related to his strict secularism, is an insistence that interpreters of the Bible must resist the temptation to read the Bible as allegory (except in those relatively few cases—such as the parables of the New Testament—where there is clear textual evidence that a biblical author intended to convey an allegorical meaning). The locus classicus for this issue is the Songs of Love (1778), where Herder argues against then-common allegorical interpretations of the Old Testament’s Song of Solomon in favor of an interpretation of it as simple erotic love poetry (an interpretation that is now generally accepted as correct). In On God’s Son, the World’s Savior (1797) Herder gives a perceptive general diagnosis of how the temptation to allegorical interpretation arises: over the course of history people’s beliefs and values change, leading to discrepancies between the claims made by their traditional texts and their own beliefs and values; but they expect and want to find their traditional texts to be correct; and so they try to effect a reconciliation of them with their own beliefs and values by means of allegorical readings.