Origen and Gregory of Nyssa on the Song of Songs

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Edwards
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Song Of Songs ◽  
Medium Of Instruction ◽  
Written Text ◽  
Gregory Of Nyssa ◽  
Western Scholarship ◽  
Lower Valuation

Gregory is often treated in Western scholarship as a norm of orthodoxy, notwithstanding the reservations of his Eastern co-religionists; in his Commentary on the Song of Songs he certainly gave currency to a form of mysticism. In recent years his admirers have protested that this work is too often read as an echo of Origen’s lucubrations on the same text. Since Origen still has the reputation of being more a Platonist than a Christian, the virtue of Gregory is supposed to lie in his rediscovery of the body as an integral part of the person, in accordance with Pauline teaching and in contrast to the philosophy which disparages it as a temporary vehicle of the soul. A closer examination of both authors suggests, if anything, that Gregory is the Platonist, at least if this term is taken to connote an indifference to history and a lower valuation of the written text as a medium of instruction.

Body and Desire

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raphael A. Cadenhead
Keyword(s):  
Full Range ◽  
The Body ◽  
Gregory Of Nyssa ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ethical Discourse ◽  
Sex And Sexuality ◽  
Diachronic Analysis

Although the reception of the Eastern father Gregory of Nyssa has varied over the centuries, the past few decades have witnessed a profound awakening of interest in his thought, particularly in relation to the contentious issues of gender, sex, and sexuality. The Body and Desire sets out to retrieve the full range of Gregory’s thinking on the challenges of the ascetic life through a diachronic analysis of his oeuvre. Exploring his understanding of the importance of bodily and spiritual maturation in the practices of contemplation and virtue, Raphael Cadenhead recovers the vital relevance of this vision of transformation for contemporary ethical discourse.

The Workshop

2020 ◽  
pp. 205-232
Author(s):  
Morwenna Ludlow
Keyword(s):  
Song Of Songs ◽  
Gregory Of Nyssa

The first part of this chapter shows how Gregory of Nyssa construes his relationships with his teachers in textual terms: the things he writes are the proof both that he is a good student of his teacher, and that he is ready to graduate from their instruction. This same model is also found in his interpretation of the bride in the Song of Songs, who is depicted as a teacher (didaskalos) and a figure of Paul and the apostles. This suggests that one should see authors in a network, and as concerned with the production of things—namely texts. The second part of the chapter extends this to argue that one can see, for example, the Cappadocians, as functioning as a literary workshop. The ancient concept of workshop (ergasterion) is examined alongside the Cappadocians’ own use of the term, literally and figuratively.

BEAUTY OR THE BEAST? THE GROTESQUE BODY IN THE SONG OF SONGS

2000 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 302-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fiona Black
Keyword(s):  
Gender Politics ◽  
The Body ◽  
Song Of Songs ◽  
The Grotesque ◽  
Grotesque Body

AbstractThe expressions of love and desire made by the lovers in the Song of Songs include intimate and detailed poetic descriptions of the body. These often cause difficulty for interpreters because the imagery used is cryptic and seemingly nonsensical. Biblical scholars frequently express some discomfort or embarrassment over this language, yet largely maintain the view that it should be interpreted positively—as complementary and loving description. In all this, they are bowled over by their own amorous relationships with this text, which make them stutter and fumble almost as much as the Song's lovers do. This essay looks at (scrutinizes) the bodies in the Song of Songs—the physical bodies described in the Song and the textual body (corpus) with which readers engage. The literary and artistic construct of the grotesque serves—ostensibly perversely—as a heuristic for viewing bodily imagery and readerly desire. The grotesque's emphasis on the exaggerated and hybridised body and its weavings of the comic and the terrifying facilitate an investigation of the Song's gender politics and its complicated and potentially conflicting presentation of desire.

scholarly journals Eros and Distance: Transformation of Desire in St Gregory of Nyssa*

2021 ◽  
pp. 101-121
Author(s):  
Vladimir Cvetkovic
Keyword(s):  
Song Of Songs ◽  
Distance Transformation ◽  
Gregory Of Nyssa ◽  
Temporal Interval ◽  
Inherent Characteristic ◽  
Middle Period ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Second Coming

The paper aims to analyze the relation between the notion of love or desire (eros) for God, and the notion of distance (diastema) between God and the created beings in the works of St Gregory of Nyssa. These two notions are interrelated on different levels, because distance that separates God from the created beings is traversed out of desire for God of the latter. First, the distance as temporal interval will be investigated, which separates the present day from the Second Coming of Christ, which is elaborated by Gregory in his early work On Virginity. The focus will then be shifted to the distance between good and evil, that Gregory explicates in the works of his middle period such as On the making of man, Against Eunomius III and The Great Catechetical Oration. Finally, the distance as an inherent characteristic of created nature that never disappears will be analyzed by focusing on Gregory’s later works, such as Homilies on the Song of Songs, On perfection and The Life of Moses.

scholarly journals Beneath the Body of the Text: Body-images in the Song of Songs

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pieter Van der Zwan
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Song Of Songs ◽  
Body Images

The various explicit references and descriptions of the different bodies in the Song of Songs have, just as characters, an “unconscious” which can be interpreted by psychoanalysis. These body-images are important as they unconsciously influence the recipients of the text and therefore need to be unpacked in a critical way. This will hopefully also show that the literal interpretations are flat reductions and a denial of a hidden depth of meaning.

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