Notes to Chapter 6 229
passages of Ps. 103:4 and Deut. 32:35 (SC 368: 62.14-15; 112.8-9) that Hebrews also cites. Biblia Patristica,
1:520–25 and the website index, BiblIndex: Index of Biblical Quotations and Allusions in Early Christian Lit-
erature, http://www.biblindex.mom.fr/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6&Itemid=8&lang
=en list the following references to Hebrews within Adv. Marc.: Heb. 1:2; 1:13-14; 2:9; 4:12; 4:15; 5:5-9; 7:17;
8:8-12; 10:30 (V.4.2; II.9.7; IV.21.12; III.14.3,7; V.14.1; V.9.9; V.11.4; IV.14.12). The critical edition of Adv. Va l.
consulted was Contre les Valentiniens, ed., trans., and annot. J.-C. Fredouille, Sources chrétiennes 280 (Paris:
Cerf, 1980). For Tertullian’s defense of Paul’s epistles without Hebrews, see Adv. Marc. V.1-21.
- On Tertullian and Hebrews, see J. F. Jansen, “Tertullian and the New Testament,” Second Century 2
(1982): 192–93. - Irenaeus’s Contribution to Early Christian Interpretation of the Song of Songs
- This theme is explored at length in Elizabeth A. Clark, Reading Renunciation: Asceticism and Scripture
in Early Christianity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999). - There is, additionally, a lengthy Armenian fragment of chapters 24 and 25 and several Greek fragments
from a paraphrase of Hippolytus’s exegetical works. For a brief introduction and Latin translation, see Georges
Garitte, Traités d’Hippolyte sur David et Goliath, sur le Cantique des cantiques et sur l’Antéchrist: version géor-
gienne, CSCO 263 (Louvain, 1965), esp. i–iv. - The evidence for an early work (or works) on the Song comes from a letter of Jerome and the Philoca-
lia of Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa. There is, however, a slight discrepancy as to whether Origen
composed one or two “tomes”: contrast Jerome’s “scripsit... in Canticum Canticorum libros X et alios tomos
II, quos super scripsit in adulescenti” (ep. 33.4; CSEL 54: 257) with the claim in the Philocalia, ἐκ τοῦ εἰς τὸ
Ἄσμα μικροῦ τόμου ὃν ἐν τῇ νεότητι ἔγραψεν (7.1; SC 302: 326). The Commentary, so Eusebius tells us, is in ten
books, with the first five written in Athens, and the remaining five completed upon his return to Caesarea (HE
VI.32.1-2). This would place its composition around the years 245–247. Regarding the Homilies, Jerome had
access to two alone, and there is no other mention of them in Antiquity that would indicate how many Origen
delivered. It is traditionally estimated that they were delivered in the years following 245, on the basis of Euse-
bius’s remark that Origen did not allow his διαλέξεις to be taken down by stenographers until he was older than
sixty years of age (HE VI.36.1). J. Christopher King, Origen on the Song of Songs as the Spirit of Scripture: The
Bridegroom’s Perfect Marriage Song (Oxford: OUP, 2005), 10–11, in my view, successfully refutes the equation
of διαλέξεις with homilies, and argues persuasively for placing his preaching on the Song several years before
the composition of the Commentary, to the years 241–242. - Hom. in Cant. 1.1; Comm. In Cant. praef.
- His commentary is now lost, but Jerome makes mention of it in De viris illustribus 74 (PL 23:683B-C):
“These are his writings: Commentaries on Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Habakuk, Ecclesiastes,
Song of Songs, and the Apocalypse of John, a work against all heresies, and many others.” - Gregory of Nyssa, In Cancticum Canticorum, in W. Jaeger, ed., Gregorii Nysseni Opera 6 (Leiden:
Brill, 1986); Nilus of Ancyra, Commentarius in Canticum Canticorum, in M.-G. Guérard, ed., Nil d’Ancyre.
Commentaire sur le Cantique des Cantiques (SC 403; Paris: Cerf, 1994); Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Explanatio in
Canticum Canticorum, in Opera Omnia (PG 81: 27–214); Gregory of Elvira, Tractatus de Epithalamio, in E.
Schulz-Flügel (ed.), Gregorius Eliberritanus: Epithalamium sive Explanatio in Canticis Canticorum (Freiburg:
Herder, 1994); Apponius, In Canticum Canticorum Expositio, in B. de Vregille and L. Neyrand (ed.), Commen-
taire sur le Cantique des Cantiques, SC 420 (Paris: Cerf, 1997). - Looking back over the complex and contested history of Song interpretation, William Phipps, “The
Plight of the Song of Songs,” JAAR 42/1 (1974): 82, remarks, “It is one of the pranks of history that a poem so
obviously about hungry passion has caused so much perplexity and has provoked such a plethora of bizarre
interpretations.” He laments that the obvious, plain meaning of the Song has been so thoroughly obscured by
centuries of misguided interpreters, beginning with Origen, whose fear of the erotic forced them to “convert”
this “passionate paean... into what was thought to be harmless mysticism” (87). In the same vein, Harold
Rowley, “The Interpretation of the Song of Songs,” in The Servant of the Lord and Other Essays on the Old Testa-
ment (London: Lutterworth, 1952), 232, remarks, “The view I adopt finds in it nothing but what it appears to
be lovers’ songs, expressing their delight in one another.... All other views find in the Song what they bring
to it.” Indeed, even scholars working self-consciously from a “post-modern” perspective have been influenced
by this rhetoric of repression, most notably New Testament scholar Stephen Moore (Stephen D. Moore, “The
Song of Songs in the History of Sexuality,” Church History 69, no. 2 [2000]) in his recent queer reading of