The Bride at the Crossroads

Abstract

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 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 dramatic 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.