One Song or Many: The Unity of the Song of Songs in Jewish and Christian Exegesis

Abstract

Abstract:How did the Bible become a unified text? How did it turn from a collection of separate scrolls into a single book? We can see a piece of the answer in the way that individual books became unified, how books of the Bible that seem not to be single, unified stories are turned into single stories by later interpreters. This article will examine one key book of the Bible where this transformation took place—the Song of Songs. How did it come to be interpreted as a single story?