The Song of Songs Through the Ages

Introduction

The Song of Songs is a fascinating text. With its monologues and dialogues about desire and love, plot fragments, sensual descriptions, and metaphorical language, it triggers the imagination of its readers and draws them into its world. How they experience this world depends on their imagination. The text leaves many questions open; there is considerable ambiguity and ample room for diverse interpretations. According to the common understanding of modern biblical scholarship, the Song of Songs is a text (or collection of texts) about human love: it describes the desire and love between a man and a woman, and its only connection to the divine is the “divine” character of human love. Why such an erotic text was included in the collection of sacred writings in ancient Israel remains a question of dispute. Regardless, with the inclusion in the Hebrew Bible the Song became a biblical book, which increases its draw and is an essential factor to explain its popularity.

Both in the Jewish and the Christian traditions, it became common early on to read the Song allegorically, as a text on the relationship between the divine and humans. Consequently, the Song became one if not the most influential texts of the entire Bible—cherished because it was understood as a text that addresses the fundamental question of God’s love for Israel, the church, and individual believers, respectively. Over the course of time, different variants of allegorical interpretation have been developed. Some of them stand in contrast with one another (cf. the polemics between Christians and Jews on the question of who is the beloved spouse of God), others were employed side by side (e.g., Marian and mystical interpretations). Throughout antiquity, the Middle Ages, the time of the Reformation, and the following century, allegorical interpretations of the Song were the norm; nonetheless, many of the allegorical interpreters still paid attention to the text’s literal meaning. A fundamental change came only in the eighteenth century: from here on, literal interpretations of the Song are prevalent; nonetheless, some interpreters still ask about allegorical meanings and the Song’s religious significance. Beyond the question of allegorical and literal understandings, the Song’s reception history is exceedingly rich because it is not limited to interpretations in commentaries, sermons, and the like. Alongside with exegetical debates, the Song also had an enormous impact on spirituality, theological and intellectual debates, understandings of marriage and love, as well as the arts (literature, music, paintings, etc.).

With the increased general interest in the reception history of biblical books, in the last few decades also the reception history of the Song of Songs has gained attention. In addition to studies on particular works of reception, several volumes have been published that give more comprehensive overviews. Particularly notable are The Song of Songs in the Middle Ages by Ann W. Astell (1990), A Two Thousand Year History of the Influence of the Song of Songs on Religion, Literature, Music, and Art by Chaim T. Horovitz (2010), The Song of Songs: A Biography by Ilana Pardes (2019), and A Companion to the Song of Songs in the History of Spirituality by Timothy H. Robinson (2021). These volumes are most helpful to gain overviews, but of course they have to make choices and leave out many aspects that are interesting as well. The present volume does not aim at filling all the gaps, but the hope is to present another “bouquet” of essays on the Song of Songs’ reception history that informs about major lines of interpretation, illustrates the diversity of forms of impact, and illuminates aspects that have not been dealt with before.

The volume originated from a conference that should have taken place in Vienna in 2020 but had to be cancelled due to the Corona pandemic. It includes twenty-three contributions of scholars in different fields, covering the Song’s reception history through the ages, including not only interpretations in the narrow sense of the word but also literary adaptions and receptions in music and art, etc. The contributors have been asked to provide some general background information so that readers who are not experts in their field of specialization get the broader picture. Many followed the suggestion to address how the Song’s eroticism was dealt with in its reception history and whether/how it was interpreted literally and/or allegorically. The articles are ordered chronologically. The following overview shall give a first impression of their breadth and depth.

The volume opens with an article by Uta Heil on Christian interpretations of the Song of Songs in the Patristic period. Heil first recalls that it was normal for Christian authors in Late Antiquity to understand the Song figuratively and interpret it spiritually, and then shows that even with this shared point of departure there was a huge variety of interpretations. To illustrate the variety and creativity of patristic interpretations of the Song, she first gives an overview of the different interpretations in Greek commentaries on the Song from the third to fifth century (Hippolytus, Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, Theodoret of Cyrus, Philo of Carpasia) and then presents two texts, which are less known. These two texts—the Homilia in Canticum Canticorum and the Synopsis Scripturae Sacrae—are attributed to Athanasius of Alexandria but they are pseudepigraphic. Heil shows that they offer a Christological interpretation of the Song in the narrower sense and thereby combine a collective allegory, related to the church, and an individual allegory, related to the Christian and his soul.

Jonathan Kaplan’s article on rabbinic interpretations of the Song in the Tannaitic (ca. 70–220 CE) and Amoraic (ca. 220–500 CE) period is the volume’s first article on Jewish interpretations of the Song. In both periods, the rabbis associated the Song’s male protagonist with God and the female protagonist with Israel, as is usual for Jewish interpretations. Their interpretations are neither erotic nor sensual but they read the Song typologically to characterize the relationship between God and Israel as one marked by deep love and mutual devotion. Kaplan shows that beyond this shared hermeneutical approach, the amoraic interpretations of the Song found scattered throughout the Palestinian Talmud also offer novel interpretations and reflect a shift from interpreting verses from the Song on an idealized vision of Israel’s biblical history (exodus, Sinai, theophany, wanderings through the wilderness) to associating them with contemporary rabbinic society and practice.

Tamar Kadari presents Shir ha-Shirim Rabbah (Song of Songs Rabbah), the earliest and longest midrashic collection on the Song, which she has recently edited in a Synoptic edition. This important work, which is structured according to the biblical text, is a collection of interpretations by different sages from several centuries, redacted at the end of the sixth or beginning of the seventh century. Kadari points out the work’s richness. For almost all verses, Shir ha-Shirim Rabbah offers interpretations attributed to different sages, reflecting a multiplicity of views and opinions. Sometimes the rabbis attempt to clarify the literal meanings of words, sometimes they touch on questions that concern the text’s overall character, but in most cases they interpret the Song allegorically on the relationship between God and Israel, describing phases of both closeness and distance. One passage (on Song 1:6) offers a parable on the question of the identity of the chosen people, indicating that the allegorical interpretation of the Song might also have played a role in Jewish-Christian polemics.

Gerhard Langer focuses on three concrete examples of rabbinic interpretations of Song 5:2 (“I slept but my heart was awake . . .”) and uses them to show how rabbinic exegesis works. The first two examples, explained in detail, are the midrash Pesiqta de Rab Kahana (fifth century) and the Song of Songs Rabbah; the third is the Targum of the Song of Songs (ninth century?), treated in an outlook. Langer shows how the rabbis interpret the Song allegorically on different phases in the history of God with Israel, bridging the past and the present and emphasizing the deep love of God, how they argue intertextually and linguistically, and how their interpretations are connected with their world view and theology.

Erik Wade presents two lesser-known examples of Christian receptions of the Song of Songs, namely the echoes of the Song in the Old English Life of Saint Mary of Egypt and the teachings (glosses) on the Song by Abbot Hadrian of Africa and (probably) Archbishop Theodore from Tarsus (present-day Turkey), who arrived in England in the second half of the seventh century and introduced the English to the Byzantine version of the legend of St. Mary of Egypt. Wade argues that the two monks of non-European origin defied the usual Christian exegesis and did not connect the blackness of the woman mentioned in Song 1:5 with sin and did not oppose it to beauty (thus Vulg. 1:4,1 with the influential translation “black but beautiful”; cf. the articles by Michaela C. Hastetter and Ute Jung-Kaiser). His analysis...