The Song of Songs in Jewish and Christian Exegesis of the Song of Songs

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

The Song of Songs is the great love song of the Bible. It occasions intensive reflection on the affective and especially amorous nature of the divine-human relationship. This course, which will be co-taught by two scholars of medieval Jewish and Christian theology respectively, provides an historically-nuanced theological survey of major trends in the interpretation of the Song of Songs developed by Jewish and Christian readers throughout the formative medieval period. Students will learn about allegorical, typological, philosophical, eschatological, pietistic, and mystical/symbolical modes of interpretation, and also the mutually polemical tensions that characterize Song of Songs exegesis across traditions. Jewish readers to be considered will include Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac of Troyes (i.e. Rashi), the Andalusian figures Abraham Ibn Ezra and Moses Maimonides, and Ezra of Girona, whose range of innovative readings are indebted to earlier rabbinic approaches to the Song as a national-historical allegory concerning Israel's unfolding redemption. Christian exegetes will include Hippolytus of Rome, Origen, Bruno of Segni, Honorius Augustodunensis, Alain de Lille, Rupert of Deutz, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Aelred of Rievaulx. Originally closely tied in Christian exegesis to sacramental mystagogy (Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist), the Song of Songs came to be read by Christians in additional contexts: the consecration of virgins, the Investiture Controversy, ecclesiology, Marian devotion, bridal mysticism, and marriage as a sacrament.