The Song of Songs as a Drama in the Commentators from Origen to the Twelfth Century

The Song of Songs as a Drama in the Commentators from Origen to the Twelfth Century Joseph R. Jones To the already vast amount of scholarship on the Song of Songs, M. H. Pope has recently added a splendid new study which will doubtless stand as the definitive work on the subject for the present generation. 1 Pope’s 743-page tome—on a text that covers three pages in some bibles—is a model of contem­ porary scriptural research, from its sophisticated and sometimes witty prose to its meticulous bibliographies. Among the legion of “vexed” questions about the Song which Pope confronts (pp. 34-35) is that of its genre: From early times the Song was regarded as dramatic. Origen, in the third century, considered it a nuptial poem in dramatic form. Two of the Greek translations, Codex Sinaiticus of the fourth century, and Codex Alexandrinus of the fifth century, supplied marginal notes to the text indicating the speakers and the persons addressed.[2] The Ethiopic translation divided the book into five parts, perhaps on the assumption that it is a drama in five acts.[3] After the Protestant Reformation, the dramatic hypo­ thesis gained ground. John Milton, in his treatise The Reason of Church Government urg’d against Prelatry, endorsed Origen’s view: “The Scripture also affords us a Divine pastoral Drama in the Song of Solomon consisting of two persons, and a double Chorus, as Origen rightly judges.”14] The dramatic theory was elaborated with great imagination and ingenuity in the nineteenth century. . . . Pope continues: The grounds for the dramatic view consist of the fact that the JOSEPH R. JONES, Professor of Spanish at the University of Kentucky, has edit­ ed works by Guervara and Cervantes and is also known as a translator and author of articles on various aspects of early Spanish literature. 17 18 Comparative Drama book presents speakers and dialogue without introductory state­ ments or transitional directions and that where action or account of speech are given in the third person . . . the narrator appears to be one of the actors. The poet-author nowhere appears. Thus if the book is a unity, and if there is a plot, we have the basic fea­ tures of a drama. (Pope, pp. 34-35) This lucid summary of the history of the genre question is unimprovable, and it has the added merit of indicating clearly the connection between the play-theory and the play-format of the earliest surviving bible manuscripts.5 My only quibble is with Pope’s statement that “the dramatic hypothesis” was as­ cendant after the Reformation, since in fact it never lost ground between the dates of the famous Greek codices and Milton, who was merely repeating the unchallenged medieval view. What I propose to do in the following pages is to muster the evidence for the theory that until recent times virtually all students of the Song took for granted that the text represented some sort of drama. Additionally, I will speculate about why this “divine” play has had so little obvious influence on the development of early Western drama. Unquestionably, the most important works on the Song are a commentary and two homilies by Origen (c. 185-254), the “towering genius” (to use Peter Brown’s words) of the thirdcentury church, a Greek-speaking Egyptian from Alexandria. His commentary (c.240) is a milestone in the development of Christian allegorical interpretation, of which Origen was the systematizer, and as such its significance is acknowledged by all who have studied it.6 It is also the “first great work of Christian mysticism.”^ Its theological importance has under­ standably obscured the apologetical and literary value of the work, though it is one of the world’s most successful and endur­ ing examples of what one might classify as “comparative litera­ ture,” as we shall see. Origen was one of the leaders in the forging of a new Christian culture, and his works show how he and his contemporaries tried to reduce the friction between the prestigious models of their classical education and the barbarian Hebrew civilization from which their faith had sprung. Origen’s way, in simplest terms, was to argue an idea...