Ilana Pardes. The Song of Songs: A Biography. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019. 296 pp. $24.95, cloth, ISBN 978-0-691-14606-5.
Reviewed by Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch (Eastern University)
Published on H-Judaic (August, 2020)
Commissioned by Barbara Krawcowicz (Norwegian University of Science and Technology)
... Pardes does not adhere to the over‐ simplified historical narrative that the Song began as a collection of literal love poems and was then subjected to allegorical readings by well-meaning (but misled) Jewish and Christian interpreters until intrepid nineteenth- and twentieth-century schol‐ ars recovered its (original) literal meaning from beneath layers of sacred accretions. Instead, she demonstrates that the line demarcating literal and allegorical readings of the Song has always been ambiguous.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
