Peccata Lectionis: Gender, Sexuality and Cultural Memory in a Deconstructive Reading of the Targum to Song of Songs

Abstract

This study examines the deconstruction of the Targum to Song of Songs, focusing on how binary oppositions and traditional interpretive frameworks are both challenged and reconfigured. While the targumists aim to prevent a potentially ‘sinful reading’ of the text, their interventions paradoxically recreate the possibility of a reading that could be considered ‘sinful’. They break down the boundaries between the spiritual and the physical, and question the identity, number, and gender of the participants in the love relationship. In the Targum, the classical narrative structure is also deconstructed. Chronology and causality yield to traditional memory and consciousness, producing a repetitive, fragmented, mosaic-like pattern unlike conventional narratives. Moreover, a semantic layer already shaped by context and in dialogue with the meaning of the textual antecedent enters the interpretive horizon of tradition, reinforcing the prominence of ambiguity—similarly to the base poetic text. The targumic deconstruction illuminates the relativity of concepts and meanings and highlights the flexible interpretive possibilities inherent in tradition. It not only liberates the conceptions within the text but also frees the reader from constraints imposed by binary hierarchies of value. The conceptual liberation leads to the realization that God and the relationship with God cannot be approached or described in earthly terms.

1. Introducing Concepts

1.1. The Otherness of the Song of Songs

Since the pshat interpretation1 has been liberated from the centuries-long dominance of allegorical interpretation, a different focus is directed toward the distinctive status of the Song of Songs.2 The primary, natural meaning of the book became predominant, bringing its unique character into stark relief. Indeed, the Song of Songs represents the category of “otherness” within the canonical series of the books of the Hebrew Bible with a natural meaning-dimension. Its distinctiveness (or différance)3 compared to the other books of the canon is evident, on the one hand, thematically, since the semantic meaning of the words that make up the text, and thus the very object of the book (the celebration of sexuality in a love relationship), does not correspond to the substantive requirements of the Hebrew Bible (if we can use this posterior generalization). The moral dimension is closely bound up with this: the message of the passages constituting the text cannot be considered to be morally aligned with the general trends; indeed, they seem to ignore the moral norms of prudery, restraint and (according to some approaches) repression.4 However, not only the overheated erotic content, but also the love relationship (which is already thematically debatable) is depicted as sinful in the text: it is established outside marriage, and the parties do not even articulate their intention to marry. Moreover, the relationship is based on free choice and reciprocity, and is described as an egalitarian relationship in which the woman is equal to the man, and even the initiator and active partner, a role that also contradicts the centrally controlled, constructed gender stereotypes of patriarchal society.

However, the substantive and moral diversity of the book would probably not be so obvious if it were not embedded in a specific formal framework, defined by a discontinuous succession of dialogical–monological poetic units. The perspective of the fragmented, dramatic lyre is dominated by a feminine point of view with a subjective and expressive character:5 a strong projection of inner feelings and a thematization of eroticism, as well as a (self-)reflexivity that resonates sensitively with the other, with oneself and with the relationship.

1.2. The Sameness of the Song of Songs

According to the human logic of unification and systematic order, the Song of Songs should be an apocryphal writing. Yet there are many reasons why we do not consider the Song of Songs to be an apocryphal book. We cannot even rule out the possibility of coincidence, although we prefer to think of canonization as a process that has been shaped by a long line of tradition over centuries and as a result of a highly deliberate selection. However, this—peripheral but undisputed—canonical status of the book can also be attributed to a successful lobbying effort by the opposition (as I have recently interpreted)6. Whatever the underlying reason may be, the phenomenon that early scriptural interpreters found it necessary to justify canonical status by dismantling the paradoxical conceptuality is evidence of the fact that the Song of Songs is a niche in the shield of canonicity built on a relatively uniform (or, so to speak, idealized) set of criteria. The allegorical interpretive activity associated with the Jewish interpreters of the ancient and early medieval period is also an attempt to eliminate the contradiction (which, according to their consideration, is ostensible at best).7

However, in a paradoxical manner, allegorical interpretation approaches the text from the reverse perspective: it does not seek to justify canonical status, but instead considers it as given, validated by the meaning of the text itself, through signs, clues8 and codes (i.e., ambiguities, euphemisms, omissions, hidden formulations, intertextualities and anomalies, etc.) that undermine natural interpretation and generate figurative meaning.9 The canonical motivation is thus derived from metaphorical, figurative meaning. According to this layer of meaning (which, according to early interpreters, is the true meaning), the content of the text is superior to any dubious morality. Thus, the text is not what the superficial, primary reading suggests, and is therefore free of any thematic, moral or formal difference. In other words, the Song of Songs is not different from, but actually the same as the rest of the books. In fact, its apparent difference10—though hardly reflected in this form by the interpreters—is precisely intended to indicate that it is even more the same, even more in line with the idea of canonicity!11

The deconstruction of the natural text thus begins at the moment of its inclusion in the canon at the latest, but perhaps even before that (at the earliest, at the time of the formation of the text), and is completed in the text of the Targum to Song of Songs. The Targum to Song of Songs—as a clear example of interpretation according to the remez12—is in fact nothing more than the manifestation of the deconstruction encoded in the Song of Songs, or the written form of the deconstructive reading of the Song of Songs.13 However, the pattern generated by the interaction of texts (i.e., the Targum and its source text), which are neither particularly distant in linguistic nor in cultural terms is by no means unambiguous. The Targum in fact deconstructs itself.

In line with the thematic focus of the journal, my study examines the ‘sinful reading’ of the Targum to Song of Songs. I adopt Derridean deconstruction as my methodological framework,14 which focuses on the dismantling of binary oppositions15 and the destabilization of meaning. However, since the Targum enacts deconstructive mechanisms—through the suspension of identity, the flexible reinterpretation of gender categories, the associative manifestations of cultural memory, and the rearrangement of value hierarchies—my method and the object of study coincide. In other words, by applying the Derridean deconstructive strategy, I gain insight into the internal operational dynamics of a text that, on a practical level, already employs the very strategies whose theoretical foundations were formulated only centuries later.16 My research question is how the deconstruction of the ‘official’ (and legitimizing) interpretation of this canonical book with apocryphal characteristics alters the morally questionable nature of the natural, literal reading of the Song of Songs. Does it obscure, erase, or perhaps expose the ‘sinful reading’ (peccata lectionis) of the Song of Songs?

1.3. The Presence of Binary Oppositions: Song of Songs

The subject matter of the biblical book, the sensual-erotic relationship between the two lovers that unfolds through monologues and dialogues, is difficult to interpret from a narratological perspective. On the one hand, the love affair is represented as episodic, regardless of chronology, and on the other hand, the emphasis is on the heightened feelings and desires, not on the plot. The surrounding space, the elements of nature and material reality also serve as projections of inner feelings, and as far as time is concerned: the moment prevails, i.e., actuality, the present tense, is brought to the fore.

However, presence is necessarily coupled with absence,17 which is actually expressed in the separation of the lovers, just as the juxtaposition of inside and outside—which itself has an erotic connotation—becomes an important dramaturgical factor. The dynamic representation of opposites presents the relationship in an active, dynamic way, but also draws attention to relativity, to the relative nature of lived experiences, desires and the surrounding environment. In a pictorial analogy—fragmentary states reflect on themselves like time bombs: they almost cease to exist at the very moment of their existence. Fulfilment itself carries the notion of unfulfilment, the opposition of its own meaning, just as the spring obtains its (consensually positive) meaning in relation to and in opposition to something. And even if the altered state of consciousness would like to believe (in an illusory manner) that fulfilment and spring last forever and that love will never end, the available conceptual set for describing these phenomena naturally undermines the illusion by including opposing components of meaning as part of the meaning.

The presence and fleeting elusiveness of feelings and the ambivalence of love are vividly captured in the descriptions and dramaturgy, but the contradictory pairs of conceptual categories also play an important role in the construction of rabbinic meaning. Thus, for example, the authors of the Targums build their own moralizing and historicizing intellectual edifice based on a dichotomous hierarchy of values while dismantling original binary oppositions.

1.4. The Significance of Binary Oppositions: Targum to Song of Songs

The authors of the Targums thus reconstitute the original polarity in the process of its deconstruction, according to their experience of cultural reality (i.e., the rituals, customs and rules that can be traced back to traditional texts), i.e., within the framework of religious-moral discourse. Along with these operations, tacit formulations are also eliminated, and implicit expressions are turned into explicit ones. As a result of the reconstruction, the dichotomies of sin–merit, punishment–reward, impure–pure, and the contrasts of captivity–confinement, suffering–redemption, and life–afterlife are given dramaturgical significance, i.e., the binary hierarchy of values—reconstructed in the process of deconstruction—becomes the organizing element of the narrative representation. Captivity is a result of sin, while deliverance arises from the merit of the fathers, repentance, learning the Torah, keeping the commandments, as well as from the intention of YY (רַעֲוָא).

Moral nuance therefore necessarily expands the horizon of the moments of time, transforming the actuality into a permanent present while incorporating elements of past and future time. In the historicizing textual space, however, not only is time extended, but all other factors also “outgrow” and transcend their original framework: the subject, the private sphere gains publicity and acquires public and social dimensions, while personal activity is placed in historical perspective and realized as the history of Israel, whose dynamics are regulated by the love affair, the relationship with YY, which transcends the mundane framework.18 As a function of this dynamic relationship, Israel’s history is not static and unidirectional, but is divided into periods and cyclical repetition. At the same time, it is characterized by a certain teleology: it moves towards a constant point of alignment, a terminus that has not yet occurred, which is the liberating act of the Messiah. Israel’s history will conclude with the redemption that will culminate in the final, complete emancipation.

2. Deconstruction of Binary Oppositions in the Targum to Song of Songs

2.1. Floating of Identity

But is the formula really that simple? Does the Targum really clearly identify the lovers in the relationship interpreted as a metaphor? How does the self appear, and how-where does the other appear? Where are the boundaries between these individuals? Are we talking about persons at all or about some kind of entities? What kind of relationship is there between the parties?

Delving into the depths of the text, we are confronted with a much more complex situation than a superficial reading suggests—both in terms of the parties involved and the system of relations.

Solomon, for example, is given an active role in the Targum,19 thus making the web of relationships more intricate. In his prophetic function, he is also the first to speak. In his introductory blessing, however, he uses the first-person plural rather than singular. His grammatical choice of speech, and his evocation of the climactic event of the people and God, the act of Mount Sinai, suggest that he is speaking in the representation of the people, substituting for the people.20

TgSong 1,2

אמר שלמה נביא בריך שמיה דיי דיהב לן אוריתא על ידוי דמשה ספרא רבא כתיבא על תרין לוחי אבנא

ושתא סידרי משנה ותלמודא בגרסא והוה מתמלל עמן אפין באפין

:כגבר דנשיק לחבריה מן סגיאות חבתא דחביב לן יתיר משבעין עממיא

Solomon the prophet said, “Blessed be the name of YY, who gave us the Torah through Moses the great scribe, written on the two tablets of stone. And the six orders of the Mishnah, and the Talmud, as an oral tradition. And he spoke to us face to face, as a man kissing his partner, out of great love, with which/because He loves us more than [even] seventy21 nations.”22

Solomon’s speech immediately shatters certain traditional categories that were considered unshakable. The first destabilization is created by the gender transposition: a man utters the words in the voice of the female singer of the original text.23 Moreover, this man speaks on behalf of (substitute for) other men. In a subtle and playful oscillation, a flexible perception of gender categories, and even a certain blending of them, is revealed here, which also implies a malleable interpretation of heterosexual normativity.

The love between two males also manifests itself in a determinate, explicit manner: “like a man kissing his friend out of great love”. But this implication is immediately dismantled by its use as a simile (“like”)—again, a substitution that presents the relationship between God and his people as a tangible and perceptive reality, which, although sometimes rather abstract, is interpreted as a highly realistic reference. The very nature of the relationship between persons of the same sex as love is challenged by the word חִבָּא, which has a meaning of ‘love’ in addition to ‘honor, esteem’ (Cf. Jastrow 1903, pp. 416, 451), and there is no palpable evidence to decide which meaning prevails here. That is, if it is to be decided at all, and not just to display and maintain polysemy!

The uncertainty of the speaker’s gender and the interplay of the singular and plural to hide the speaker’s identity places the subject of identification in a new perspective, a point made particularly striking through the interaction with the female singer of the base text. All this is expressed in a very important place in the structure of the text: right at the beginning (after the historicizing introduction),24 so that it can be seen as a kind of guideline regarding the identification (or rather the destabilization) of the parties involved in the relationship. The interpretive operations proceed in the spirit of a deconstructive strategy: by overturning traditional gender and speaker categories and playfully crossing singular and plural forms, the text undermines fixed identities and norms, as well as traditional prejudices and expectations (a tension amplified by the dynamic between the biblical and targumic readings).

The prejudice of conventional equivalence must be set aside, if only because the other party can also be someone else, or the same person can alternate between the role of woman and that of man. In the case of Solomon, for example, this is exactly what happens: he not only voices the female character but can also take the place of the male. Just like here, for instance.25

TgSong 7,7

אמר מלכא שלמה כמה יאי אנת כנשתא דישראל בזמן דתסבולי עליך ית עול מלכותי בעדן דאנא מוכח

:יתיך באיסורין על חובתיך ואנת מקבלא יתהון ברחים ודמיין באנפיך בתפנוקין

King Solomon said, “How beautiful you are, O congregation of Israel, when you wear the yoke of my kingdom, when I chastise you with chastisements for your sins, but you receive them with love and regard them as pleasures.”

In this revelation, Solomon—both rhetorically and in terms of content, in his verbal demonstration of religious hierarchy, power and control—resembles God, and can be replaced by God, who also appears in the Targum in his royal capacity.26 The human and divine spheres are creatively intertwined here as a result of “human initiative”: changing Solomon’s name to YY in the introductory formula would provide an adequate context for a pronouncement with a strong emotional charge. The substitution of the masculine principium, i.e., the transference of YY according to the traditional correspondence, shows that the substitution-based interpretations can be diverse and that the metaphors can be interpreted within a wide range of limits.

The limits for the interpretation of metaphors become so flexible that YY can be transposed into the role of the female narrator,27 which is a role reversal that eliminates the traditional view from the male perspective. The use of the female voice also indicates that in a love relationship the notion of self-identity is redefined—the self is redefined in relation to the other, and the subject becomes permeable to the other party.

TgSong 1,13 (excerpt)

בי היא זימנא אמר יי למשה איזיל חות ארום חבילו עמא פסק מני ואשיצינון

At that time, YY said to Moses, “Go, get thee down, for the people have caused destruction; separate thyself from me, and I will put an end to them.” (…)

This play on gender categories and on the malleable interpretations of the parties involved can also be played out in a number of other ways. If we stick to the female representation of YY, we also find a multiple transference that subverts categories from traditional attribution.

TgSong 4,1 (excerpt)

נפקת ברת קלא מן שמיא וכין אמרת כמא יאי אנת כנשתא דישראל

The Heavenly Voice (= daughter of the voice) came down from heaven and spoke: “How beautiful you are, O congregation of Israel!” (…)

Here, YY traditionally represents the male party28 but (literally) speaks in the voice of the female formula of His surrogate29, moreover in a context that praises the beauty of the party that is traditionally identified as a female entity. The male–female relation is thus subtly and imperceptibly stretched beyond its own limits and becomes embedded in the framework of another, female–female intimate relation.

The self can be someone else and someone else can be myself—we can transcend into the other, and vice versa. The deconstruction of female–male characters can thus be manifested in the most diverse forms, in the interchange of each other or in the mutual dissolution of entities conceived as subjects.

2.2. Fault Lines of the Union30

The dissolution of one entity in another recurs in many places and in various forms—not independently of the textual antecedent that sometimes serves as a guide, sometimes as a source of inspiration, and sometimes as a loose network of associations. Both the hidden and the transparent symbolism of the programmatic utterance that opens the songs has already been discussed. In Solomon’s opening speech,31 the revelation on Mount Sinai appears as the culmination and sealing of a love relationship, and the entity articulated as a woman bears the marks of this act as a reminder from the moment of union onwards forever.32

Authentic sensual eroticism is therefore spiritually transfigured, and thus the very notion of sexuality is reinterpreted. Sensuality is relocated into a liminal zone of contact, an intermediate realm between the human and the transcendent, and the union takes place through Torah learning, through dedicated work in the commandments of the Torah and through the rituals of religious institutions, in a way that transcends the laws of physics. Yet, we cannot claim that physical sensuality is simply replaced by spiritual or intellectual pleasure, or that sexuality is superseded by some trans-material union independent of material reality. No, that is not the case at all.

Indeed, textual descriptions of the union with YY cannot or do not seek to overcome the finite set of concepts defined by the tangible, material world: they typically use linguistic features (words, structures) to represent the meta-physical act that belong to the notion of eroticism or physical sensuality.

The physical entanglement, the incorporation of one into the other, could probably not be conveyed more vividly than by the use of the verb ערב (ithpa.), which means ‘to be mixed’ (Cf. Jastrow 1903, p. 1110). The descriptive phrase in the following passage about the wanderings in the wilderness contains the statement that the sons of Israel will not embrace the Torah’s teachings intellectually or spiritually, but will become physically one with it. The word order of the sentence, and the function of the subject clause “Torah”, also imply that it is not the sons of Israel who play the active, initiating role.

TgSong 3,5 (excerpt)

כען אנא מעכיב יתהון ארבעין שנין במדברא ותהי אוריתא מתערבא בגופיהון

(…) Now I will keep them back forty years in the wilderness, and the Torah will be merged into their bodies. (…)

The following passage contains a rather unusual association of imagery, which is imbued with a raw instinctive tone. It announces the coming of the Messiah, and (in an imperative mode) presents the union with the Torah through the act of suckling. Breast milk feeding is a special kind of physical contact that is not granted to everyone and is limited to certain life situations and ages.

TgSong 8,1 (excerpt)

כאחא תהי לנא כאחא ונסק לירושלם ונהי ינקין עמך טעמי אוריתא היכמא דיניק ינוקא בדדיא דאמיה

(…) So,33 be like a brother to us, and let us go up to Jerusalem, so that we may suckle the pleasures of the Torah with you, just as a baby suckles its mother’s breast (…)

The powerful impact of the almost provocatively bold imagery that appears in this sentence is undeniable. As is true of all metaphors, its elemental power is derived from its inherent tension, from the interplay between the conceptual and the pictorial (the life-giving synthesis) and the interference of the divergences (the instinctive and the spiritual realms). The poetic quality of the image is also due to the noun טְעֵם, whose meaning contains semantic components of both physical (‘pleasure’) and spiritual (‘argument, reason’) relevance (Cf. Jastrow 1903, pp. 543–44). Ambiguity (conflicting meanings, the infusion of connotations, and the semantic irradiation)34 is therefore not only expressed in the extended metaphor, but also at the level of the smallest elements, the words.

The combined presence of corporeality, eroticism and spirituality, which both cancel out and reinforce each other, creates a constant tension, of which there are many examples. But let us now consider a “variant” in which the relationship between Israel and YY is manifested as a declared spiritual relationship. Or is it not?

The uncertainty is not accidental. Indeed, the semantic and syntactic operations themselves create uncertainty, resulting in a permeation between the spiritual and the material—characterized by a back-and-forth movement—thus, the category of pure spirituality is again shaken and tinged with other meanings.

TgSong 7,11

אמרת כנשתא דישראל בכל זמן דאנא מהלכא באורחיה דמרי עלמא הוא משרי שכינתיה בינאי ועלי

מתויה וכען דאנא סטיא מן אורחתיה מסליק שכינתיה בינאי ומטלטל יתי ביני עממיא ואנון שלטין בי

כגבר דשליט באתתיה

The congregation of Israel said, “At all times when I walk in the way of the Lord of the World, his Shekinah35 dwells among me and desires me, but now, when I depart from his path, his Shekinah is removed from me36 and he casts me out among the nations, and they take power over me as a man takes power over his wife.”

The Shekinah, the keeping-breaking of the commandments, the exile, and the invocation of the Ark of the Covenant, the Holy of Holies and the Temple are traditional expressions of spiritual thought and religious language. Spirituality, however, is immediately reassessed in relation to the context, since the words referring to the corporeality in indirect (“dwells/places between me”, “between me”) and less indirect (“desire”) ways emphasize the sensual, erotic nature of union. Moreover, the masculine “power” can also be associated with the image of sexual violence, an association that points out the qualitative difference between the two types of intimate relations and further relativizes the concept of spirituality.

The Targum itself thus dismantles the concepts it represents. Whatever phenomenon it speaks of, its substance is immediately called into question or put into quotation marks by the use of its chosen linguistic and stylistic devices: the ambiguities of semantic meanings, the contextual meanings superimposed on semantic meanings, which override them. Thus, the gender, number, identity, role of persons and entities responsible for the love relationship, as well as the very nature of this partnership, are rewritten over and over again.

But what about storytelling? The historicizing framework that transforms expressive poetics, capturing the momentary, into a narrative of historical scale?

2.3. Dissolution of the Classic Narrative

The historical context of the introductory excerpt (The Ten Songs)37 recalls the structure of classical narratives based on chronology and causality. Although the causality that shapes the sequence of events is not explicitly explained, the singing “storytelling”, the praise—as a gesture of thanksgiving for some miraculous deliverance—appears as a common narrative thread connecting successive ages. In the programmatic introduction, the Targum thus reflects its own genre and, at the same time, its dissociation from the genre of the original work. However, the shift in genre towards narrative cannot be fully realized, and thus the classical narrative structure announced in the opening paragraph is dissolved immediately after the introduction.

This is because, instead of the grand narrative, which—in the sense of the introduction—would cover the events of the era from the creation of the world to the coming of the Messiah (as the final liberation), we find narrative segments structured around traditionally significant persons and historical episodes. The events depicted are brought into operation associatively by memories, and their causality is due to the binary hierarchy of values, which is also formed in the consciousness of tradition. Chronology and causality are thus replaced by traditional remembrance or traditional consciousness,38 which, unlike the structure of classical narratives, creates a repetitive, discontinuous, mosaic-like structure.

This system can be seen in both longer and shorter passages, but it is also beautifully expressed even within a single verse. The example below is at the end of a longer passage that starts out as a classic narrative, beginning with a scene on Mount Sinai, which is a key moment in recollection (and is revisited again and again in the text). However, the sequence of events is unexpectedly interrupted at the crossing of the Jordan, as the motif of the crossing evokes a number of other events that are preserved in memory. As a result of the flashbacks, the original narrative thread appears to be forgotten. The next motif, which can be interpreted chronologically, is linked to Solomon (considered as the author of the Song of Songs by tradition). That is, the narrative thread is taken up, or rather tied off, in connection with the building of Solomon’s temple—following the temporal flashbacks to the time of the three patriarchs, with a great leap forward in time.

TgSong 3,6

כד סליקו בית ישראל מן מדברא ועברו ית ירדנא עם יהושע אמרו עמי ארעא מא היא דא אומא בחירא

דסלקא מן מדברא מתגמרא מן קטרת בוסמין וסעידא בזכותא דאברהם דפלח וצלי קדם יי בטור מוריה

ומתמרקא משח רבותא בצדקיה דיצחק דאתעקד באתר בית מקדשא דאתקרי טור דלבונתא ומתעבדין

ליה נסין בחסידותיה דיעקב דאשתדל גברא עמיה עד מיסק קריצתא ואתגבר מניה ואשתיזב הוא ותרי

עשר שבטין

When the house of Israel came out of the wilderness and crossed the Jordan with Joshua, the people of the land said, “What is this chosen people39 who have come out of the wilderness?! (She is) perfumed with the incense of spices—and aided by the merit of Abraham, who worshipped and prayed before YY on Mount Moriah. And (she is) fragrant with the oil of greatness, through the righteousness of Isaac, who was bound in the place of the Temple, which is called Mount Incense. And miracles befell him40 through the favour of Jacob, with whom the man fought until the dawn, but [Jacob] proved stronger than him, thus he and the twelve tribes were saved.”

TgSong 3,7 (excerpt)

…ית בית מקדשׁא כד בנא שלמה מלכא דישראל

When Solomon, King of Israel, built the Temple....

At the level of the given chronological narrative, Solomon’s activity is a flash-forward twist, but the narrative does not return to the conquest of Canaan. The actual storytelling is replaced by the Temple thematic, from whose sphere of attraction it is no longer possible to escape (except for a flashback). Metaphorically speaking, the Temple of Solomon functions as a source of light from which there is no escape, into which the narrators are constantly “drawn”. In the narrative strategy of the Targum to Song of Songs, the cultural consciousness-narrative places the Solomonic age at the intersection of time and history, in relation to which the events dated earlier by tradition are preparations, prefigurations, and those dated later are merely repetitions. That is to say, the time of Solomon is the present time, which is also the prevailing time of the Targum. The past appears as if it were the past extension, and the future as if it were a future extension of this present. The interplay of timelines is achieved through the associative montage technique of memory, which inevitably includes a sense of relativity and disorientation. And on top of all this, a new timeline, the age of tradition formation, the “remembering” time of the Targum authors is added, creating a permanent tension.

The extended present tense and the process of rearranging the rules of the narrative are also attested to by the frequent repetition of key words responsible for stylistic cohesion, which belong to the concepts of “now” and “waiting”, or connote “returning to a state” and “circular direction”: פון זעיר אתעכבו ‘wait now for a while’ (TgSong 8,4), שנין ארבעין אתעכבו ‘they were detained there for forty years’, אוריכו ‘wait’ (TgSong 2,7),חוי כען ‘now show me’ (TgSong 1,7), וכען צביתי למעבד ‘I want to do it now’ (TgSong 2,12), כען אנא מעכיב יתהון ‘now I will restrain them’ (TgSong 3,5), איתיאו כען ‘now come’ (TgSong 5,1), כען קום ‘arise now’ (TgSong 7,14), הדרי כען ‘return now’ (TgSong 6,1), ונסחר ‘and let’s walk around it’, וחזרו ‘and walked around’ (TgSong 3,2), דמסחרן יתיה חזור חזור ‘those who walk around that’ (TgSong 3,3), ומעיקין חזור חזור, ‘and surround it closely’ (TgSong 5,7), חזור חזור לקבלי ‘all around, against me’ (TgSong 6,5), etc. These keywords, which are also stylistic in terms of structure, appear over and over again in the narrative constructed by traditional consciousness, and as such, in an implicit, still definite way, inform us about the alignment (lingering, getting there or returning) regarding the Solomonic era.

2.4. Liberation of Traditional Concepts

The events depicted are therefore part of the tradition; however, the way they are represented breaks the boundaries of tradition. The circular, boldly associative organizing principle, vibrating between different timelines, overwrites notions of traditional narrative strategy. Even the depiction of the love affair reflects a unique approach to tradition in that it tears down the walls between the abstract and the tangible, the spiritual and the physical, and challenges the participants’ conventional understanding of self-identity. Moreover, as the semantic layer of meaning, already influenced by the context and engaged by the meaning of the textual antecedent, is brought into the interpretative horizon of tradition, ambiguity becomes predominant. This is so despite the fact that rabbinic hermeneutics seeks to eliminate ambiguity—a contradiction that can be regarded as another manifestation of the anomaly. Finally, the unusual image associations point out the inadequacy of conceptual distinctions.

By the dissolution of traditional concepts and meaning, the deconstruction by the Targum reveals the relativity of concepts and meaning, and at the same time the malleable interpretative potential of tradition. One might say that this deconstruction outlines a discourse that leads to a liberation of concepts.41 In the context of the Targum, the Messiah liberates us not only from captivity but also from the bondage of concepts, as a result of which binary oppositions (sin–punishment, captivity–recovery, impurity–purity, etc.) are also eliminated, rendered meaningless and empty. According to the deconstruction, as a result of which the deeper layers are brought to the surface (Cf. Ullmann 2011, p. 422), the Targum does not present traditions set in stone but implicitly reveals that traditions are constructions of consciousness and, as such, are malleable. Tradition, even despite its limitations, does not represent a constraint—on the contrary, tradition gives space for imaginative creativity, which then shapes tradition.

3. Conclusion: Peccata Lectionis or Innocentia Lectionis?

The exploration of the fault lines and internal traces of the Targum also exposes the natural meaning of the original work: the content and stylistic components of the Song of Songs are revealed. The present tense, the momentary, which is the dominant time factor in the original poesis, is not lost, but is given a historical tone. The feelings and desires of the lovers are embodied in conscious perceptions and collective memories that have been personalized by tradition. The intertwining of the lovers’ subjects is depicted through the fluidity of identification, and the inexpressible euphoria of the lovers’ union is expressed through the ambiguity of a finite linguistic set.

The content of the Targum may thus become morally questionable and can be realized as a ‘sinful reading’—similarly to the Song of Songs in its natural meaning. However, this only occurs if certain categories are regarded as immutable: for instance, binary gender identity and heterosexual normativity, the untouchable authority of God (articulated as masculine and physically inaccessible), and the spiritual (rather than physical) nature of the human–divine bond of love, as well as the notion that representation of this love can occur only through spiritual means—which also entails the strict separation and hierarchical differentiation of the human and divine (transcendental) spheres. The targumic reading may also be considered ‘sinful’ if the identity-forming events of Israel’s history are understood as actual historical occurrences, interpretable only in the context of a subordinated relationship with God, placed within a historical continuum, and recounted in a single authoritative manner.

The deconstructive and creative procedures both destabilize these categories and liberate them from fixed constraints while simultaneously extending this freedom to the reader, releasing them from the confines of binary hierarchies and prejudiced thought. Such intellectual emancipation underscores the inadequacy of available linguistic tools to fully grasp and convey what transcends conventional categories. In other words: God cannot be approached through rigid oppositions, and the divine–human relationship likewise resists any description framed by earthly hierarchies of value, revealing a complexity that exceeds conventional conceptualization. Israel’s history (and historiography) also defies binary simplification, reflecting a depth beyond reductive description.

It is an understanding of the targumic representation and an insight into the deeper message of the Targum. It is a case of innocentia lectionis. In other words, a pure, innocent reading of the deconstructed text can also be achieved through deconstruction.