In the present work Professor Glendinning sets out to convey some idea of the richness of the Christian experience in the poetry-hymn lyrics and other verse forms-from Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, CE 300-1300. It is the period sometimes called the Age of Faith, when the purpose of life was to prepare one's soul for eternity. The author selects 60 representative Latin poems and creates parallel English texts, accompanying them with explanatory notes and comment on cultural and historical background. The notes include short samples of the original Latin texts. All texts, as well as reference materials in the discussion of the texts, are meticulously documented. For those wishing to explore the matter further as to religious, social and cultural history, as well as the music of the hymns, a basic bibliography is included.

The Song of Songs, traditionally attributed to Solomon, is a collection of lyrics that celebrate in earthly terms the love of a bridegroom and a bride. Throughout the course of early Christian history, the Song of Songs was widely read as an allegory of the love of Christ both for the church and for its individual members. In reading the Song this way, Christians were following in the steps of Jewish exegetes who saw the Song as celebrating the love of God for Israel. In The Song of Songs, the inaugural volume of The Church's Bible, Richard A. Norris Jr. uses commentaries and sermons from the church's first millennium to illustrate the original Christian understanding of Solomon's beautiful poem. In recent times, the Song of Songs has been more a focus of literary than of religious interest, but Norris's work shows that for early Christians, this text was counted, with the Psalms and the Gospels, among those Scriptures that touched most deeply on the believer's relation to God. All in all, Norris's Song of Songs is a masterful work that aptly acquaints contemporary readers with the church's traditional way of discerning in this text a guide to the character of Christian belief and life. This volume -- and the entire Church's Bible series -- will be welcomed by preachers, teachers, students, and general readers alike.

Refers to New Testament teachings while delineating the nature of early Christian worship of God. Bibliogs.

In this work, Karl Shuve provides a new account of how the Song of Songs became one of the most popular biblical texts in medieval Western Christianity, through a close and detailed study of its interpretation by late antique Latin theologians. It has often been presumed that early Latin writers exercised little influence on the medieval interpretation of the poem, since there are so few extant commentaries from the period. But this is to overlook the hundreds of citations of and allusions to the Song in the writings of influential figures such as Cyprian, Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine as well as the lesser-known theologian Gregory of Elvira. Through a comprehensive analysis of these citations and allusions, Shuve argues that contrary to the expectations of many modern scholars, the Song of Songs was not a problematic text for early Christian theologians, but was a resource that they mined as they debated the nature of the church and of the virtuous life. The first part of the volume considers the use of the Song in the churches of Roman Africa and Spain, where bishops and theologians focused on images of enclosure and purity invoked in the poem. In the second part, the focus is late fourth-century Italy, where a new ascetic interpretation, concerned particularly with women's piety, began to emerge. This erotic poem gradually became embedded in the discursive traditions of Latin Late Antiquity, which were bequeathed to the Christian communities of early medieval Europe.

How was the scriptural imagery used in the Song of Songs to speak of the Bridegroom and the Bride? Mark W. Elliott presents a range of interpretations paying attention to the context of the commentators in the Early Church.

In Music in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity, John Arthur Smith presents the first full-length study of music among the ancient Israelites, the ancient Jews and the early Christians in the Mediterranean lands during the period from 1000 BCE to 400 CE. He considers the physical, religious and social setting of the music, and how the music was performed. The extent to which early Christian music may have retained elements of the musical tradition of Judaism is also considered. After reviewing the subject's historical setting, and describing the main sources, the author discusses music at the Jerusalem Temple and in a variety of spheres of Jewish life away from it. His subsequent discussion of early Christian music covers music in private devotion, monasticism, the Eucharist, and gnostic literature. He concludes with an examination of the question of the relationship between Jewish and early Christian music, and a consideration of the musical environments that are likely to have influenced the formation of the earliest Christian chant. The scant remains of notated music from the period are discussed and placed in their respective contexts. The numerous sources that are the foundation of the book are evaluated objectively and critically in the light of modern scholarship. Due attention is given to where their limitations lie, and to what they cannot tell us as well as to what they can. The book serves as a reliable introduction as well as being an invaluable guide through one of the most complex periods of music history.

Even as worship wars in the church and music controversies in society at large continue to rage, many people do not realize that conflict over music goes back to the earliest Christians as they sought to live out the "new song" of their faith. In A New Song for an Old World Calvin Stapert challenges contemporary Christians to learn from the wisdom of the early church in the area of music. Stapert draws parallels between the pagan cultures of the early Christian era and our own multicultural realities, enabling readers to comprehend the musical ideas of early Christian thinkers, from Clement and Tertullian to John Chrysostom and Augustine. Stapert's expert treatment of the attitudes of the early church toward psalms and hymns on the one hand, and pagan music on the other, is ideal for scholars of early Christianity, church musicians, and all Christians seeking an ancient yet relevant perspective on music in their worship and lives today.