CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2011
| Author | Kelenhegyi, Andor |
|---|---|
| Title | COMMENTARIES ON THE SONG OF SONGS - A POSSIBLE JEWISH-CHRISTIAN POLEMICS |
| Summary | The Song of Songs is a canonical book in both the Jewish and the Christian traditions. While its canonicity was clearly established as early as the second century CE, the dubious identity of the male and female characters of the text, however, perplexed readers for centuries, and, therefore, induced the production of a great number of interpretations over the first millennium CE. The most significant Jewish tradition in the first millennium understood the Song of Songs as speaking about the relationship between God and his chosen nation, Israel, while a similarly widespread tradition among Christian interpreters understood the text as recounting the relationship between Christ and the Church. Despite the apparent similarity between these understandings, scholars have been arguing long whether these traditions are interrelated in their development, or merely share a common origin. In my thesis, I aim at comparing Jewish and Christian commentaries from between the fifth-eighth centuries CE, which contain these understandings. I believe that due to the institutionalization of the Christian Church at the beginning of this period, its role, and, consequently, its self-perception had changed. I claim that this change is, in turn, reflected in the development of Christian, and thus, as a reaction to it, Jewish commentaries. Comparing Christian commentaries from the fifth-eighth centuries to approximately contemporary Jewish commentary compilations, I try to outline the relationship between the two traditions. I try to show that structural similarities between the Jewish and Christian interpretations imbued with significantly contradicting conclusions of the meaning of the text proper point to a bilateral endeavour of charging the interpretation of the Song of Songs with polemical arguments. I claim that this polemical edge can be direct, accusing the respective other with ignorance of theological truth or God’s will, or indirect, reassuring the theological notions of the interpreter’s own community and, by implication, denying the interpretation of the respective other. |
| Supervisor | Wilke L. Carsten, Geréby György László, Perczel István |
| Department | Medieval Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2011/kelenhegyi_andor.pdf |
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