Book presentation Princeton

Leora Batnitzky, Ilana Pardes & Elaine Pagels
The Song of Songs: A Biography (Labyrinth Books)

Thursday, October 10th 2019 @ 6PM
Labyrinth Books. 122 Nassau Street

Co-sponsored by the Department of Religion and Program in Judaic Studies, Princeton University

The Song of Songs has been embraced for centuries as the ultimate song of love. But the kind of love readers have found in this ancient poem is strikingly varied. Join us for a conversation among three acclaimed scholars of religion about the history of the greatest love poem ever written.

Ilana Pardes invites us to explore the dramatic shift from readings of the Song as a poem on divine love to celebrations of its exuberant account of human love. With a refreshingly nuanced approach, she reveals how allegorical and literal interpretations are inextricably intertwined in the Song’s tumultuous life. The body in all its aspectspleasure and pain, even erotic fervoris key to many allegorical commentaries. And although the literal, sensual Song thrives in modernity, allegory has not disappeared. New modes of allegory have emerged in modern settings, from the literary and the scholarly to the communal.

Offering rare insights into the story of this remarkable poem, Pardes traces a diverse line of passionate readers. She looks at Jewish and Christian interpreters of late antiquity who were engaged in disputes over the Song’s allegorical meaning, at medieval Hebrew poets who introduced it into the opulent world of courtly banquets, and at kabbalists who used it as a springboard to the celestial spheres. She shows how feminist critics have marveled at the Song’s egalitarian representation of courtship, and how it became a song of America for Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, and Toni Morrison.

Ilana Pardes is the Katharine Cornell Professor of Comparative Literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is the author of Countertraditions in the Bible, The Biography of Ancient Israel, Melville’s Bibles, and Agnon’s Moonstruck Lovers. Leora Batnitzky is the author of Idolatry and Representation: The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig Reconsidered, of Leo Strauss and Emmanuel Levinas: Philosophy and the Politics of Revelation, and of How Judaism Became a Religion: An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thought. Batnitzky is Professor in and Chair of the Department of Religion at Princeton. Elaine Pagels is a preeminent academic whose impressive scholarship has earned her international respect. A Professor of Religion at Princeton University, she is the author of The Gnostic Gospels, Beyond Belief, and Revelations, among other influential works. Her most recent book is the memoir Why Religion?