Synopses & Reviews
The Song of Songs, traditionally attributed to Solomon, is a collection of lyrics that celebrate in earthly terms the love of a bridegroom and a bride. Throughout the course of early Christian history, the Song of Songs was widely read as an allegory of the love of Christ both for the church and for its individual members. In reading the Song this way, Christians were following in the steps of Jewish exegetes who saw the Song as celebrating the love of God for Israel.In "The Song of Songs," the inaugural volume of The Church's Bible, Richard A. Norris Jr. uses commentaries and sermons from the church's first millennium to illustrate the original Christian understanding of Solomon's beautiful poem. In recent times, the Song of Songs has been more a focus of literary than of religious interest, but Norris's work shows that for early Christians, this text was counted, with the Psalms and the Gospels, among those Scriptures that touched most deeply on the believer's relation to God.Drawing on his wide knowledge of early church history, Norris has selected passages from representative early Christian interpreters, translated them into idiomatic English, and arranged them as verse-by-verse comments on the biblical text. The Christian voices gathered here include Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose of Milan, Augustine of Hippo, Cyril of Alexandria, Gregory the Great, Bede the Venerable, William of St. Thierry, Bernard of Clairvaux, and many more. In addition, Norris offers fresh translations not only of the scriptural texts of both the Septuagint and the Vulgate but also of all the original sources used by the early commentators themselves. He also provides introductions to eachpassage, highlighting how many of the best minds in Christian history went about the task of biblical interpretation and pointing out items of note in their respective views.All in all, Norris's "Song of Songs
Synopsis
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