The Song of Songs Through the Ages

Essays on the Song’s Reception History in Different Times, Contexts, and Genres

Annette Schellenberg

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9783111620947
• eBook ISBN: 9783110750829
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Jewish Literary Criticism

The Song of Songs is a fascinating text. Read as an allegory of God's love for Israel, the Church, or individual believers, it became one of the most influential texts from the Bible. This volume includes twenty-three essays that cover the Song's reception history from antiquity to the present. They illuminate the richness of this reception history, paying attention to diverse interpretations in commentaries, sermons, and other literature, as well as the Song's impact on spirituality, theological and intellectual debates, and the arts.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• The Song of Songs Through the Ages Introduction
• Between Hippolytus and Athanasius The Variety of Patristic Song of Songs’ Interpretations
• “Dripping from the Lips of Sleeping Ones” The Interpretation of the Song of Songs from Tannaitic Literature to the Palestinian Talmud
• The Exegesis of all Exegeses The Uniqueness of Shir HaShirim Rabbah’s Approach to the Song of Songs
• “I Slept but My Heart Was Awake” Rabbinic Interpretations of Song of Songs 5:2
• Reading the Old English Life of Saint Mary of Egypt with Abbot Hadrian of Africa The Influence of Byzantine Readings of the Song of Songs on Early Medieval England
• Targum Song of Songs, the History of Israel, and the Study of Torah
• Do Not Wake or Arouse Love Erotics of Time and the Dream of Messianic Waiting
• Of Songs and Sequels The Song of Songs in the Hebrew Liturgical Poetry of al-Andalus
• A Vocabulary of Love The Song of Songs in the Secular Hebrew Love Poetry from Muslim Spain
• Bernard of Clairvaux The Song of Songs as an Instruction on the Spiritual Life
• Preaching the Song of Songs at Admont A Minority Report from the Twelfth Century
• Voices Shifting and Voices Layered The Song of Songs in Medieval German Commentaries
• An Ecology of Desire Pierre d’Ailly’s First Theological Work, a Latin Commentary on the Song of Songs
• Lovers, Gardens, and Wounds An Exploration of the Medieval Iconographies of the Song of Songs
• Singing the Song of Songs in the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance The Evidence of the Alamire Manuscripts
• Early Modern Women Comment on the Song of Songs
• Varieties of Reformed and Puritan Reception of the Song of Songs, 1550–1730
• The Song of Songs in Late Eighteenth-Century Germany Theology and Desire
• The Song of Songs as a Drama A Radical Change of Interpretation in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century
• Love and Language The Song of Songs in Scholem and Rosenzweig
• “Black and Beautiful” (Song 1:5) A Key Verse in the Exegesis of the Song of Songs from Origen to Dieter Salbert’s Schwarz—wie die Teppiche Salomos (1971)
• “I Am Black and Comely” Literal and/or Allegorical Interpretations in Theology, Music, and Image, Especially in the Present Time
• “The Time of Singing has Come” The Lure of the Song of Songs for Today’s Composers and Songwriters
• Index