The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

338 The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context
de Lyra wrote a historicizing commentary on the Song in which he
argued that chapters one to six cover the Old Testament period,
starting with the exodus, while chapters seven to the end cover the
period of the New Testament and the early church, down to the
triumph of Christianity under Constantine. 31 The historical approach
was popular among Christians in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
It reached its acme (or perhaps one should say its nadir) in
Thomas Brightman's Commentary of the Canticles. 32 Brightman not
only correlated the Song of Songs with a historical reading of the
book of Revelation, but produced a detailed historical schema which
detected in the Song allusions to detailed events at the time of the
Protestant Reformation! The historical reading is by no means dead. It
has distinguished contemporary advocates in the French Catholic biblical
scholars A. Robert and R. Tournay in their commentary on the
Song of Songs in the Etudes Bibliques series. 33
31. Biblia Sacra cum Glossa Ordinaria... et Postilla Nicolai Lyrani (Lugduni
MDLXXXIX), III, cols 1817ff. See especially col. 1819 for Nicholas's historical
schema.
32. Thomas Brightman, A Commentary on the Canticles or the Song of Solomon
(Amsterdam, 1644). Brightman, for example, relates Song 6.5 specifically to events
in Geneva in 1550! ''Thy teeth are as a flock of sheep which go up from the washing:
whereof every one bears twins, there is none barren amongst them... At length
sound teeth sprung up again, such as were Luther, Melancthon, Bucer, Zuinglius,
Oecolampadius, Capita, Calvin, Peter Martyr, and many others, whose names are
written in heaven. And verily the truth of this Prophecie, seemeth very apparent in
the decree made at Geneva, in the year 1550. namely, that the Ministers not only in
sermons... but also severally through houses and families, with a Magistrate of the
City should instruct everyone, and require a reckoning of every one's faith. And it is
scarce credible what fruit followed, as Beza sheweth in the life of Calvin' (p. 353).
33. A. Robert and R. Tournay, Le Cantique des Cantiques (Paris, 1963). On the
history of the interpretation of the Song of Songs, see Ginsburg, Song of Songs,
pp. 20-102; R.F. Littledale, A Commentary on the Song of Songs, from Ancient
and Mediaeval Sources (London, 1869), pp. xxxii-xl; Pope, Song of Songs, pp. 93-
229. Ginsburg writes (p. 67): 'The influence of the Chaldee mode of interpretation
seems now to have become more apparent in the Christian Church. Aponius, who is
quoted by the venerable Bede, and must therefore have lived in the seventh century,
regards the Song of Songs as describing what the Logos has done for the Church
from the beginning of the world, and what he will do to the end of it; thus, like the
Chaldee, he takes the book as a historico-prophetical description of the dealings of
God with his people, only that the Chaldee takes the Jews as the object of the
description, but Aponius substitutes the Gentile Church'. If this were true then our