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Origen’s exegesis of the Song of Songs, despite the praise it generally raised both in antiquity and in modern times, still awaits for deeper investigation as far as the literary project of the Alexandrian and its output are concerned. In this respect, it is difficult not only to exactly define the mutual relations between the Commentary and the Homilies on the Song of Songs, apart from the evident similarity of their themes, but more specifically to catch the particular nature of Origen’s interpretation at the first level of the biblical text against his well-known allegorism. Viewing the «littera» or «historia» of the Song as a theatrical piece, as especially shown in the Commentary, Origen delivers a dramatical interpretation which by its careful description of the successive scenes develops into a proper script for the stage. Though this explanation is meant to guide the reader to a further level of interpretation, the ‘letter’ cannot here be appreciated simply as the provisional step leading to the ‘spirit’, i.e. the spiritual intelligence of the Song which is in principle the only one permitted for Origen in this biblical love poetry. Instead of that, through the discourse engaged by the dramatic interpretation, on the one hand, there is an overlapping of both the ‘historical’ and the ‘spiritual’ explanation and, on the other hand, the dramatic exegesis also delivers a surplus of sense which is not totally subsumed in the spiritual interpretation. At moments the Song as ‘play’ seems therefore to gain in Origen’s perceptive reading a life of its own.
Shenoute the Great, archimandrite of the White Monastery in Sohag, is considered to be one of the firmest adversaries of Origenism in Egypt during the 5th century. The early Origenistic controversies describe the reaction of certain cycles to some aspects of monastic spirituality related more or less to Origen. The impact, however, of Hellenistic philosophical and religious background, of which an important factor was Origen, on later Christian literature and particularly on the Christian interpretation of Scriptures in the so-called Alexandrian tradition goes beyond and extends surprisingly to authors of anti-Origenistic tendencies as well. The present essay aims to demonstrate through the textual analysis of the Shenute’s homily As I sat on a Mountain that the influence of the Origen’s hermeneutic principles, as they have expressed in his Caesarian commentaries and homilies on the Song of Songs, can also be identified in the hermeneutic approach of the abbot of Sohag to the same biblical text.
2012 •
Harvard Theological Review
Shades of Grace: Origen and Gregory of Nyssa's Soteriological Exegesis of the “Black and Beautiful” Bride in Song of Songs 1:5 (2006)2006 •
The present work is about SoS 2:4 and its mystic way of exegetical interpretation. The main thesis is that SoS 2:4 is the key to the bridal or love–mystical understanding of the Song of Songs. The translation of this verse by the Vulgate should aid especially the exegetes because it differs from the Hebrew “Endtext”. So the focus lies on a special aspect of love called ordinatio caritatis.The main theme deals with the “Auslegungsgeschichte” to investigate the verse's history, especially the (tropological-) spiritual reading of the Song of Songs by showing elected examples. This serves the understanding of the (mystical-) theological access and diversity of the Bible. Beginning with the famous writings of Origen the development of SoS 2:4 will be traced until late medieval times, where the reader ends up with the great Cisterciansian mystics Bernard of Clairvaux and William of St. Thierry.
2019 •
The interpretation of the Song of Songs has a long history. The traditional Jewish and early Christian interpreters apply the allegory method to find a “spiritual” meaning. For example, they try to understand the Groom as the Lord and the Bride as Israel. Furthermore, early Christian tradition interprets the Groom as Jesus and the Bride as the Church. Nevertheless, in this article, we try to read the Song of Songs in other perspective by understanding it in the light of Ancient Near East (ANE)’s background. We will focus on the exegesis and general analysis on Song 7:7-10a. This passage is a part of a big section of Song 6:4-7:11 (“New Songs of the Beloved Man”). Song 7:7-10a is an admiration-movement. We try to propose a new general structure of Song 7:7-10a and its meaning in the light of ANE’s background on royal ideology, temple, wisdom, promised land and love traditions.
2023 •
For most of the previous century exegetes debated whether the Song of Songs (hereafter the Song) is in its literal sense the poetic description of the erotic desire between a man and a woman (naturalistic reading), or whether it is––still in its literal sense––an allegory on God’s love for his covenant people (allegorical reading). With the break of the new millennium a new chorus of voices is slowly emerging according to which the Song is both. Its love lyrics extol the mystery of divine-human love in and through the reality of human eros. In other words, the Song of Songs is theological in its literal sense. This paper will exemplify how the theological intention of the Song’s author(s) is discernible on both a diachronic and a synchronic level.
Hebrew Studies
“The Romantic Fragment as a Key to a New Reading of Song of Songs” Hebrew Studies Hebrew Studies 61 (2020): 235–2572020 •
The secret of Shir ha-Shirim—the Song of Solomon—defies decryption. It confounds the reader for reasons that transcend the difficulty of explaining the presence of an erotic love song in the Holy Scriptures; i.e., even those not committed to the locational context struggle to interpret it. Few commentators dare to acknowledge the incomprehensibility of Shir ha-Shirim, yet the many interpretations that attempt to cope with the poem fail to tackle the problems of lack of context, disintegration, and fluid boundaries between literal and metaphoric meanings. Here, however, these predicaments are represented not only as bumps on the road to an integrative interpretation of the Song but also, and mainly, as the epitomic characteristics of Shir ha-Shirim, via direct reference to the Romantic Fragment genre. That Shir ha-Shirim may be set within the context of the Romantic Fragment is not self-evident. This poem has never been read this way even though it is characterized as such at several levels. The reading dynamic in this poem is typified by a fascinating interplay of integration versus disintegration, disconnection between textual segments and the world; and redundancy coupled with information gaps. The readers face fluidity of borders between concrete and metaphoric meanings, between innocent and sinful, what is seen and what is heard, and among real world and dream world. This article combines historical and theoretical research and links study of the Romantic Fragment with literary theory. The circumstances surrounding the genesis of the Song and its genre characteristics and poetics are but one side of the coin. On the numismatic reverse are the reading strategies that the Song invites and, foremost, the interplay between the reader who tries to integrate the text and a text that does not integrate satisfactorily to any setting at all. A close examination shows that Shir ha-Shirim is characterized by disintegration and multiple frameworks that switch off between rivalry and contradiction. Below the links and tensions in Shir ha-Shirim are described within a perspective frame. By combining the historical point of departure with theoretical tools, it becomes possible to surmount the narrow characteristics of the Romantic Fragment in order to portray traits of the Fragment as a historical genre and, concurrently, to derive a theoretical model of the reading process.
2021 •
The Song of Songs is a theological work in its literal sense. For centuries this was recognized by the overwhelming majority of its readers. Yet, in the argument of this study the Song is neither an allegory of divine-human love, nor a mere human love song. Rather, by adopting a symbolic language, the Song is able to express the realities of divine love in and through human love, thereby giving full expression to both dimensions. In order to substantiate and advance this view, this study introduces a new hermeneutical refinement into the discussion, giving careful consideration to different orders of textual meaning (i.e. “metaphor”, “allegory”, and “symbol”) in order to better understand what precisely we mean in speaking of the sensus literalis. The success of this symbolic approach owes much to its diachronic method. In particular, it is able to assimilate a redactional analysis of the Song’s composition in which the personage of Solomon plays a remarkable and increasingly significant role (i.e. “Solomonic Redaction”). This prominence of Israel’s legendary king is plotted within an identifiable ancient near-eastern royal ideology marked by an unmistakably religious orientation. This ideology in turn opens the door to a phenomenology of the kingship symbol by which certain aporias are resolved and the poetics of the text recover their full force.
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