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The Church Fathers · c. 200–204; survives complete only in Georgian

Commentary on the Song of Songs

Hippolytus of Rome · c. 170 – c. 235

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What it is

A reading of the Song in which the bride is the church and the bridegroom the Word, breaking off at chapter three. The women at the tomb become the new Eve, sent to the apostles as apostles themselves.

Why it lasted

The earliest Christian commentary on the Song, and the origin of the whole nuptial tradition that runs through Origen, Bernard, and John of the Cross. Lost in Greek and recovered from a Georgian manuscript in the twentieth century.

Scripture it works from

Where to read it

Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.

These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.

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