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"Roomy Hearts" in a "More Spacious World": Origen of Alexandria and Ellen Davis on the Song of Songs

Anglican Theological Review, Fall 2006 by Byassee, Jason

This paper compares the exegesis of the Song of Songs done by Origen of Alexandria and Ellen Davis of Duke Divinity School. Once it would have been nearly impossible to make a fruitful comparison between a patristic exegete and a modern one. Now, convergences in church history and in biblical interpretation allow us to see the two exegetes as doing similar things. This article sets out the basic hermeneutics of each exegete, and then compares their commentaries on portions of the Song's first and second chapters. The article concludes with some broader comparisons between patristic exegetical theology and the recent postliberal return to a theologically informed Old Testament exegesis, suggesting what both have to offer the life of the church.

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Something exciting has been happening recently in the academic study of the Bible. In the world of biblical interpretation, theologically inclined exegetes have reassessed the potential validity of allegorical exegesis as a viable approach to Scripture. At the same time, good patristic scholarship has shown that ancient Christian theologians were, first and foremost, biblical exegetes. The result of these two scholarly movements is that we can now speak again of ancient and con temporary exegetes as doing the same kind of thing. In this paper I will compare the work of Origen of Alexandria with that of Professor Ellen Davis of Duke University on the Song of Songs. The very fact that the third-century allegorist and the contemporary postliberal exegete can be fruitfully compared is the most important contention of the paper.

"A More Spacious World": Ellen Davis1

Both Ellen Davis and Origen agree that the Song requires a great deal of wisdom to be read well. Such wisdom is precisely what many contemporary readers of the Old Testament lack. Against most of her fellow biblical scholars, Davis flatly denies the assertion that the Song of Songs landed in the Jewish and Christian canons by a colossal blunder. Some biblical scholars claim that the rabbis and fathers mistakenly thought the text was about a mystical relationship between the soul or community and God.2 Davis suggests that in reality the Song's subject is a simple sexual encounter, and its genre something like "soft pornography." If the Song were indeed the "biggest religious joke of all time," the result would be profoundly sad, for then "nowhere within the covers of the Bible [would there be] a truly happy story about God and Israel in love." In countless instances Israel's God professes his ultimate allegiance to her, only to be met by her "harlotry" and "whoring" after false gods. Only here in the Song does the Lord profess his love for Israel and then hear her respond with "yes, I love you too." If its status in the canon were such a mistake we would have to "accept the sad fact that there is at the heart of the Bible a cosmic loneliness that finds no relief."3

Davis argues with her colleagues on grounds they share. It is no extra-scriptural hermeneutic by which she is convinced that the rabbis and fathers are right, but rather a hermenentic toward which she is driven by the Song itself. There are simply large swaths of the text that are unexplainable if one is unwilling to read it at any other level than that of a physical encounter. Often commentators seem not even to recognize the bankruptcy of an approach that ignores this. On the famous verse in which the bride professes that her guts "heave" for her lover (Song 5:4), one commentator writes that the bride must be referring to the particular part of the female anatomy that would be aroused in such a situation, the 'bulbospongiosus muscle." Davis's response is understated: "This strikes me as the kind of information that is inconsequential even if accurate, which someone writes because he doesn't know what else to say."4 In contrast, Davis attends to literal, even carnal, readings when appropriate, and also to figural readings, an approach that is better able to account for all the particular features of the Song. We might say that reading the Song figuratively in places represents a superior literal reading of it, since it accords better with the intentions of those who put it to paper, canonized it, and have loved it for centuries.

Such literal evidence in favor of the traditional readings is impressive. If this were merely a story about happy human sexual love, we should be exceedingly surprised at its ending, or lack thereof. A poem that ends, "flee, my darling" is more likely to be about "intense mutual longing and fleeting enjoyment" than a simple hedonistic celebration of raw sexual encounter-a point in favor of mystics' readings and against modern ones.5 It is also strange that, for all the attention to the physical in this poem, we are never told what the lovers look like. The descriptions of physical features are all highly symbolic-breasts like fawns, neck like a tower, hair like a flock of goats-suggesting the poem cannot be about two specific people in any exclusive fashion. Rather, like the script for a play, this work must be intended to invite participation, to have actors speak these lines again and again.6 Furthermore, Davis notes, there is great attention here to the particularities of the landscape of Israel: "You are beautiful as Tirzah, my dearest, lovely as Jerusalem." Such specific geographic and historic references to the land and history of Israel suggest that the text is about God's romance with his people, rather than simply a voyeuristic detailing of a single particular romance. The culminating argument for Davis is the many explicit textual ties between the Song and other portions of Scripture, especially Hosea, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah, which are indisputably about God's relationship to his people and his yearning for their return to faithfulness after their exile from the land. Song 5:4 (which drew the analysis of the bulbospongiosus muscle) is actually a quote from Jeremiah 31:20, in which God longingly cries, "Is not Ephraim a beloved sou to me, a cuddled child? Oh, whenever I speak of him, I remember him all over again. Therefore my guts heave for him, surely I will have mercy on him." Here in the Song, we finally hear "much-beloved Israel return Gods intense yearning," saying, in effect, "my guts heave for you too."7

"Roomy Hearts" in a "More Spacious World": Origen of Alexandria and Ellen Davis on the Song of Songs

Anglican Theological Review, Fall 2006 by Byassee, Jason

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